


a circus of carrion

by oogaboogu



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Blood and Gore, Character Death, Graphic Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Stylist!Clarke, Tribute!Murphy, mentor!Bellamy, nothing graphic but please read the note, octavia is a boy for plot reasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:15:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 35,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24314125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oogaboogu/pseuds/oogaboogu
Summary: It makes sense, of course, when Murphy thinks about it, but he hadn't realised it before now: Bellamy might have won the Games, but he hasn't escaped them. He won't ever escape them. None of them will.Or;Welcome, welcome, to the 71st annual Hunger Games.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/John Murphy, Charlotte & John Murphy (The 100), Clarke Griffin & John Murphy
Comments: 47
Kudos: 117





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sapphictomaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphictomaz/gifts).



> whew! a few warnings for this one:
> 
> there is fairly graphic blood and gore and plenty of violence. there is also the threat of non-con and implications of non-consensual sex work. no actual non-con happens within this, but ontari is here and she carries her own warning.
> 
> this is dedicated to nico (sapphictomaz) who has listened so patiently to my feral ramblings about this fic over the past few days. they are a star and if you haven't yet read all of their stuff i truly don't know what to tell ya. you are missing out!
> 
> the wonderful @isftycks on twitter made this breathtaking moodboard for this fic which i shall link here — it is so beautiful and i will never get over it! https://twitter.com/isftycks/status/1274149820878512128?s=21

It rains the day of the Reaping. Murphy’s only good shirt is soaked right through. He huddles in the centre of the damp knot of eighteen-year-old boys, his fingers crossed at his side and his face schooled flat. He’s got his father’s medal in his shirt pocket, for luck. He knows it’s stupid, knows it’s pointless; as if there were anything at all that he could do to dispel the dread that pools in his belly and curdles there every Reaping. He is trying his best not to shiver as rainwater drips down the back of his neck.

Octavian Blake stands next to him. He doesn’t hide. His head is held high as he stares down the human crayon on the square's central stage, as though he dares her to draw his name.

Octavian Blake won’t be called. He’s rich, now, and his name is in the lot only seven times. There are hungrier boys here, and there are desperate boys here, boys willing to gamble their lives for another meagre bag of grain. Murphy doesn’t know how many slips of paper bearing the name _John Murphy_ are in the lot—he’s lost count. He’s been desperate. He’s been hungry. But this is it. This is his last year. This is his last Reaping. He’ll never stand in this square and dread the sound of his name ever again.

‘Ladies first!’ sings Effie Trinket, vinyl-clad hips swaying underneath the broad rim of her umbrella. God forbid the rain ruin her hair, coiffed high atop her head, or her purple lipstick, or the eyelashes that fan out like spider’s legs around her eyes; the irises unnaturally violet with contact lenses and glittering even in the pallid grey daylight.

She purses her lips as she calls out: ‘Charlotte Brown!’

At the sound of the name, the crowd parts where the youngest of the girls are gathered. Horror passes through District 12 like a shadow, a ripple of silent discontent, the shifting of hundreds of feet, breath huffed out through thin-lipped faces and gazes averted from Charlotte, as if her death sentence is a literal cloud casting a shadow over her head. Nobody looks directly at her, shoulders slumped, face pale, stricken. Her blonde hair is braided tightly against the back of her head; pale wisps have fallen loose around her ears, curling in the rain. Her dress has flowers on it. She must be twelve, but she looks no older than nine or ten. She doesn’t cry or fight; instead, she takes one deep breath, chest shuddering, before she moving toward the stage. She steps carefully up the steps, her legs so short that she must lift her knees nearly up to her chest to scale them, like a little soldier on the march.

Murphy suddenly has a very bad feeling as he watches the little girl climb mutely up to the stage. She looks a little blank, as if she can’t quite comprehend what’s happening to her. He thinks: _It’ll be me_. He knows it. He feels it coming like it’s inevitable, feels as though his feet have been glued to the tracks as he hears the train's horn blare. It is like there’s never been any other choice for him.

‘Now, for the boys,’ croons Effie Trinket, leaning forward into the mic with a wide, white grin.

She fishes around in the bowl for the slip of paper. Her purple nails are so long. They must be fake. Murphy wonders how she can do anything with nails as long as that; then he remembers that she’s from the Capitol. She doesn’t need to use her hands; her work is to look pretty and inoffensive, to announce a death sentence with a smile. She plucks out the slip and holds it high for a moment; a white flutter in an invisible breeze. Then she unfolds it.

Murphy feels sick. Brightly, she reads out his name for all to hear.

‘John Murphy!’

The crowd of other boys all move away from him suddenly and sharply, like he’s diseased, like death is catching. He avoids their eyes, looks up at the sky, at the rain that still falls, gathering heavy in his eyelashes, running down his cheeks, chilling him to the bone. He’s going to die, but the rain doesn't stop and the sky doesn't care.

 _John Murphy! John Murphy! John Murphy!_ It echoes in his ears.

‘Come on up, John, don’t be shy!’ Effie trills, beckoning him forward. ‘The youngest of the girls and the oldest of the boys. How _exciting_ for District 12!’

Like he’s living in a dream, like the world has been made unreal, he walks to the stage; the crowd parts to let him pass. The square has fallen silent; wordlessly, the people of District 12 watch him walk to his doom. He doesn’t look at Charlotte, doesn’t look at the cameras that are panning in on his empty face, doesn’t look at anyone. The surface of the stage is slippery with rainwater, but he does not stumble. His body no longer feels like his own.

Expertly propping her umbrella against her shoulder to keep it aloft, Effie Trinket grabs Charlotte’s hand, and then his own—her’s is warm, and dry, and he wonders if she’s disgusted by his clammy flesh, his limp hand, cold like he’s already dead before he’s so much as stepped foot in the arena. Octavian Blake in the crowd catches his eye; he doesn’t know why, because Blake isn’t looking at him. He’s looking behind him, at the end of the stage where his brother stands, stone-faced and bitter.

The Mayor begins a droning recital of the Treaty of Treason. Murphy doesn’t listen. He’s trying not to panic, not to scream. It’s all he can do to swallow his terror, to stare out over the grey, rain-soaked blur of District 12, and avoid looking into the cameras that capture him from every angle and every direction. He prays no one can tell that he's coming apart at the seams.

Once the Mayor is finished, Effie Trinket raises both their hands over their heads. She’s stronger than she looks, despite giving off the impression that she's fuelled solely by vapid enthusiasm and body glitter. ‘Our tributes!’ she announces, and Murphy feels like his chest is about to cave in. ‘John Murphy and Charlotte Brown!’

Murphy looks into the black eye of one of the cameras. He knows that a hundred thousand people are looking back at him. He doesn’t know what possesses him.

He winks.

Then they are swept into the Justice Building, swept away from the crowds and the cameras and the rain. Murphy’s shivering for real now, great big full-body shakes that rattle him to the core. Little Charlotte’s also looking worse for wear. Her courage—or just her blankness—has disintegrated. She looks close to tears.

‘Sit down,’ he says to her, nodding at a chair in the corner. She collapses into it with a sniffle.

‘Oh, sweetheart, don’t cry!’ Effie says. ‘You are just _adorable_ —they’ll eat you right up in the Capitol!’

Murphy doesn’t feel all that steady himself. He’s dripping rainwater onto the fine carpet of the room. He’s still got coal dust lining his nails.

‘Good,’ says a gruff voice. Bellamy Blake closes the door behind him. ‘Never let them see you cry,’ he says to Charlotte. ‘At least, not yet.’

She looks up, eyes and nose red, and nods. Murphy goes and sits next to her—the place looks vaguely like a waiting room, with several chairs scattered about, the floor lushly carpeted and the seats upholstered in velvet. He supposes he should be doing more to comfort her, but a part of him doesn’t see the point. They’ll have to kill each other soon.

Then, Bellamy catches him in his gaze. ‘What was with the wink?’ he asks.

‘You saw that?’

‘The entire country saw that. You formulating a strategy already?’

Murphy shrugs. His shirt is stuck to his shoulders with damp. ‘Figured it’d do no harm,’ he says. He lies. He hadn’t known what he was doing when he winked at the camera; he’d only known that he had better make an impression. He looks down at his hands and notes with surprise that they’re trembling. He doesn’t feel panicky anymore; just fake, unreal, like he’ll wake up back in his bed in the community home at any moment and the day of the Reaping will be just beginning all over again.

‘Yeah, for someone from District 1 or 4. You’re a Seam rat. Don't think that they can't tell. Cockiness doesn’t suit the underdog. Well done—you’ve splashed a target on your back, and you’ve been tribute for what, all of five minutes?’

‘Oh hush,’ says Effie, patting Murphy on the shoulder. ‘Don’t you listen to that grump, John. I thought you looked very … _sassy_!’

‘Yeah,’ says Bellamy. ‘Let’s see how far sassiness gets you in the arena, shall we?’

‘Maybe we will,’ says Murphy. ‘Anything I do has to be run by you first going forward, is that it?’

‘Yeah,’ Bellamy says darkly. ‘That’s it.’

Through the back door, a man who must be Charlotte’s father arrives, escorted by one of the Peacekeepers. He sweeps her instantly into his arms, crying just as hard as she is. All of them—even Effie—avert their eyes from his heaving, undignified sobs, and his white-knuckled grip on his daughter's narrow shoulders.

‘Come on,’ says Bellamy. ‘There’s another room through here. Where are your family, John? Are they coming to see you off?’ he asks Murphy.

Murphy only laughs at that. ‘I’m nobody’s son. And nobody’s coming to see me off.’ He pushes ahead, into the next room, rubbing his nose with the back of his knuckle. His bravado feels contrived, even to him, but at the moment it’s the only thing he has. ‘So, anybody know where can I find a dry shirt? We wouldn’t want me to catch a cold before my big Capitol début, now would we, huh?’

* * *

Murphy is late to dinner on the train because he spends half an hour crying in the shower. He shuts off the water—so hot his shoulders have turned pink—and towels his hair dry, before changing into the biggest sweater and the softest trousers he can find. The shower was the best he’d had in his life, and he had hated every minute of it. He'd washed his hair three times just for the ritual of it, in the vain hope it would calm him down. He’s all cried out by the time he steps out, feeling strange and raw and hollow and the cleanest he’s been in years.

‘So you decided to show up,’ Bellamy says as soon as Murphy steps into the carriage. He, Effie, and Charlotte all sit around a table laden with food—food so rich Murphy doesn’t know the name of most of it.

He grabs a plate and piles it high. ‘My apologies, oh wise one. I didn’t realise District 12 gets the privilege of having a second dictator for a mentor.’

Effie lets out a scandalised squeak, and Bellamy glares at him—until he sees Murphy’s red-rimmed eyes, hears his husk of a voice. Something about him softens, but not by much.

‘Never ever say that again,’ he says, but without any bite. ‘That’s my first tip, though I _expected_ you both to have enough common sense to know that already.’

‘Can’t help it if you underestimated me,’ says Murphy.

He finds he keeps bristling at Bellamy, at the very idea of him; his clean dark curls, his tanned skin, his broad shoulders and white smile. He had been like Murphy once. He had been a Seam rat himself, had lived in Murphy’s own gutter of a street. He'd had coal dust under his fingernails, too.

Then, five years ago, thirteen-year-old Octavian’s name had been drawn out of the lot on Reaping Day. Bellamy had been District 12's first volunteer in decades. And then Murphy watched him behead a child on live television, a kid who wasn’t all that much older than Charlotte. That wasn't the only thing that Bellamy had done in the Games, but it was the most gruesome, and it was the one that stuck. That was the thing people remembered.

Murphy looks at Charlotte, sitting small in her chair, holding her fork in her closed fist. He wonders if he has it in him to behead her. He wonders if he has it in him to kill her—to kill anyone—at all. He thinks he does. He thinks he'll have to.

He can’t afford to think otherwise.

He turns back to Bellamy. ‘Thank you. I see your wisdom and guidance will be just _invaluable_ in the weeks to come.’

Bellamy smirks and leans back in his chair. ‘You know you won’t last a day in there without me, John, right?’

‘I’ll survive,’ says Murphy, thrown off-guard by being called _John_. ‘I always do.’

After dinner they all sit down to watch the recap of the other reapings across the country, and Murphy is reassured by the notebook and pen he sees Bellamy produce, balancing it on his knee and taking notes throughout, though he never would say so aloud. The tributes this year are much the same as they are every year—a few beefed-up Career tributes, a few wild cards, and then a few underfed kids who’ve been handed a death sentence, as good as dead even before the Games begin. Murphy knows what category he fits into even before he sees his own face flicker onto the screen.

The commentators barely say a word as Charlotte’s name is called; even on the screen, even edited and smoothed out, the fury of District 12 feels palpable.

‘Oh, she’s very little,’ one says.

‘But it’s the little ones you have to watch out for!’ the other one says, in a hollow attempt to be jovial.

Bellamy pauses the recording. Charlotte has drawn her knees close to her chest, and is looking at the screen with wide eyes. He says, ‘Charlotte, did you watch the Games two years ago?’

She nods. ‘Yeah. Johanna Mason won.’

Johanna Mason, who had seemed so pathetic that nobody had looked twice at her, assuming she’d be killed off instantly. Then she had slaughtered all of them.

‘You’re young and you’re small,’ says Bellamy. ‘So, all the other tributes will disregard you. Great. I just need you to make the audience like you. Make them feel sorry for you. Then, once you’re in there, we can turn you into Johanna Mason.’

‘By killing everyone,’ says Charlotte. She looks back at the screen, at her own pale face, frozen and fearful. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I think I can do that. I think I can try.’

‘You’ll have to,’ says Bellamy, not bothering to conceal his bitterness.

‘Well, I think you’re very charming,’ says Effie. ‘Cute as a button!’

Bellamy presses play again. And then Murphy hears Effie say: _John Murphy_ , and for a brief, horrible moment, he’s back in the square, in the rain, listening to the ringing of his own death knell, feeling the world shift beneath his feet, his days suddenly numbered.

It’s a jolt to see himself on the screen; thin, his shirt plastered to his shoulders, his face devoid of any expression. The cameras catch him looking up at the rain. He sees how his own chest rose and fell, even on the stage. Then, the wink. A half-smirk. Murphy hardly remembers doing it; that afternoon feels like it was a hundred years ago now.

‘A nice show of confidence there from the District 12 tribute,’ remarks one of the commentators with his nasally voice.

‘But can he back it up in the arena?’ asks the other, wry.

Murphy isn’t all that tall, and he’s certainly not bulky. He thinks back to fifteen-year-old Bellamy on his television screen; even then, Bellamy had been strong from days spent poaching in the woods around the district, a well-known secret. He’d been their first victor in many many years, and even he had hardly made it. Murphy remembers watching with the rest of the District, heart in his mouth, as Bellamy rose to his feet onscreen, holding his own guts in one hand and an axe in the other, before burying it in the last remaining competitor’s neck with a wild cry. He had collapsed there and then; word was that even the doctors in the Capitol had struggled to bring him back from the brink. Murphy wonders if he has a nasty scar on his belly from that one. 

Bellamy was handsome—still _is_ handsome. Bellamy was, and is, well-liked. Bellamy had strode onto Caesar Flickerman’s stage five years ago like he belonged there, had flirted with the sponsors and with the crowd so effortlessly it was a wonder they hadn’t declared him victor there and then. 

Bellamy is a born winner.

Bellamy pauses the screen on Murphy’s wink. He taps his pen against his finger. ‘Maybe I can work with that, actually, John,’ he says. Then, eyes darkening. ‘I guess I’ll have to.’

‘I go by Murphy,’ he tells them. ‘Not John.’

Effie wrinkles her nose. ‘I suppose “John” is very common,’ she muses. ‘We can get away with calling him “Murphy”, can’t we, Bellamy?’ She appraises him for a moment, still with those ridiculous violet irises. He supposes she must be thinking hard, but her forehead doesn’t furrow; she’s had the Capitol treatment that stops you from wrinkling. It always seemed bizarre to Murphy; as if growing old could be anything but a privilege. ‘Hmm. You’re not... _classically_ handsome. But you do have a—well, I suppose, a roguish sort of charm.’

Murphy frowns at that, unsure if he ought to be flattered or offended.

‘You know,’ says Effie tentatively, ‘I know the most fabulous surgeon who could fix up that nose of yours in a jiffy—'

‘His nose is fine, Effie,’ Bellamy interrupts, in a tone that brokers no argument. ‘His attitude, on the other hand…’ 

Bellamy’s gaze lands on him, searching, and Murphy feels uncomfortable under the examination. He resists the urge to rub his nose by staring right back at Bellamy, at his warm eyes, the freckles dusted across his cheeks. His anger, his discomfort, suddenly feels ill-fitted. He wants to hate Bellamy, wants to keep snapping at him, fighting with him. He doesn't know why he can't, why his anger fades as quickly as it flares.

‘I want to know what _you_ think, Murphy,’ Bellamy says, then.

Oh. That’s why.

Murphy shrugs. ‘I like my nose,’ he says. He knows that isn’t what Bellamy is asking him.

The truth is that he doesn’t know what to think. The truth is that Murphy is scared; there’s a knot that’s settled somewhere in his gut and he doesn’t know how to unravel it. The truth is that he’s desperate to survive. The truth is that he’s terrified to die. And he’s not like Bellamy. He might be a born survivor, but he’s not a born winner.

Bellamy just looks at him for a moment longer, before pressing play again.

‘I don't know if I have it in me to kill somebody,’ says Charlotte, her high voice wavering and afraid.

Bellamy leans back in his seat. ‘Yeah, well,’ he says, ‘I didn’t think I did, either.’

* * *

Murphy stands in the centre of the room, naked as the day he was born. He has never felt especially self-conscious before—his body is just a body, after all—but after the horrified squawks of his personal grooming team at the sight of him, he supposes he ought to have. They’ve plucked his eyebrows, tidied up his hair, waxed his chest but left his legs alone, because some body hair is apparently more acceptable than others. He feels more bemused than offended.

He’s waiting for his stylist, Clarke. He doesn’t have to wait long. She steps quietly, unobtrusively, in the door, and he realises with a shock that she isn’t much older than he is. She looks entirely normal, dressed in a chic black jacket, her blonde waves cropped to her shoulders, and she smiles kindly at him when she catches him looking at her.

‘Hi John,’ she says.

‘Murphy, he corrects, automatically.

‘Murphy,’ she amends. She circles him, looking him up and down. He doesn’t shrink back under her gaze. _It’s just a body_ , he thinks. ‘I’m glad they didn’t cut your hair,’ she says. ‘I can work with this length.’

‘Do you want me to get a new nose, too?’ he sighs, and to his surprise, she laughs.

‘Not at all,’ she says. ‘You can put your robe back on now, Murphy.’

‘You seem a little young to be a stylist,’ he says, shrugging his arms back into the shoulders of his robe and tying it around his waist.

She nods. ‘It’s my first year. I wanted District 12.’

‘You _wanted_ to design a bespoke mining helmet, is that it?’

She shakes her head, a small smile gracing her lips. ‘Not exactly.’

* * *

Murphy doesn’t see Bellamy or Charlotte again until he’s dressed and brought to the chariots. As he approaches his coal-black chariot with Clarke, he sees that he and Charlotte match; her stylist Wells has obviously been working in tandem with his own.

They’ve both been dressed all in black; simple, fitted outfits, their arms bare from the shoulder down. Murphy’s trousers are tucked into his boots while Charlotte’s skirt grazes the top of her knobbly knees. The black material is soft and plain—until it hits the light. Then it is iridescent, gleaming like diamonds, refracting light like a rainbow. When the spotlight hits them, they will practically glow. They both wear capes of an indeterminate colour—purple in this light, but blue in another, and green in another light still. It’s their makeup that is most startling though; black ash has been painted around their eyes, extending up their temples, dripping down their faces in jagged patterns. They look terrifying. They look unforgettable.

Bellamy pauses as he sees Murphy approach, his gaze taking in the ensemble, the makeup, Murphy’s hair twisted back from his face just as Charlotte’s has been braided back from her’s.

‘I want you to hold hands out there,’ says Bellamy. ‘Make a show of unity. Charlotte’s much smaller than you, Murphy, so it’ll help if you both look and act like a pair. Charlotte, you can wave if you like. Murphy—’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘You want to decide your own strategy this time, too?’

Murphy shrugs. The silk cape flutters. ‘No winks?’

‘Maybe not. You’ll get them too excited,’ Bellamy says drily. ‘Try to look…above it all, maybe. If you’re gonna play cocky, you’ve got to follow through. Though I can’t see that lasting for long once you get to the Training Centre,’ he adds darkly.

‘Your lack of faith wounds me, Bellamy,’ Murphy says.

‘I’m sure you’ll get over it. Get up, the two of you. It’s nearly showtime.’

Murphy reaches out an arm to help Charlotte up into the carriage; her hand in his feels fragile as a baby bird. The knot in his gut tightens.

‘You okay?’ he asks her. He’s not all that tall, but he towers over her. He wonders if Bellamy making them hold hands is hurting _his_ chances even as it boosts her’s. _There’s no way she’ll last for long in the Games,_ he thinks, _but then, there’s no way I will, either_.

‘Little nervous,’ she admits, in her halting voice. ‘You?’

‘Terrified,’ he tells her, and she smiles up at him.

The horses start to move. Together Murphy and Charlotte ride out into the bright lights and screaming crowds of the Capitol.

* * *

Murphy doesn’t sleep that night, no matter how long he tosses and turns. He can’t pinpoint why—after all, he slept fine the previous night, when the new reality of his impending death was still sinking in. But something still keeps him awake, and every time he closes his eyes he still sees the flashing lights that accosted him from every angle during the chariot lap, like they’ve been imprinted on the insides of his eyelids.

They’d made a splash, the two of them, hand in hand, the light bouncing off their clothes, stark against their char-eyed stares. He had seen the footage. There was something haunting about them standing like two spectres atop their chariot, he thought, something that the hapless, jolly commentators had struggled to describe, even as none of them could look away. Clarke, Wells, Bellamy and Charlotte had all been ecstatic, but Murphy had seen the stares the other tributes were levelling his way, and he had felt nothing but unease. He doesn’t know what the first training session tomorrow will bring—he’s always been scrappy, but sheer spunk counts for next to nothing in the face of practised technique, and he’s seen the muscle and bulk of some of the other tributes. In hand to hand combat, he’ll have all the chances of a fart in the wind.

Now, that very same unease keeps him awake in his lush rooms, listening to the distant noise of the Capitol echoing up to him from all directions. It’s so loud here, in this city, thronged with people, glittering with lights. He loathes it. After a few restless hours, it seems pretty clear to him that he’s getting nowhere. He slips out of his soft bed and heads to the kitchen area for a glass of water—no need to turn on any lights, for they sense his movement and illuminate his way without him having to lift a finger—and he’s just filling up the glass at the tap when, from elsewhere on the floor, he hears a strangled yell.

The glass slips out of his hand and smashes in the sink. 

He hears the yell again.

It sounds like someone’s being murdered—a little prematurely, Murphy thinks. They’ve still got a show to put on, after all.

Dressed only in his pyjamas, he slips out into the hall. Heart beating loudly in his chest, he listens hard—and then he catches a gasp, very dimly, at the edge of his hearing. And he knows exactly where it’s coming from. He follows the sounds of distress across the hall and into Bellamy’s quarters. They’re laid out much the same as his own, which makes it easy to find the bedroom.

Murphy still has a mentor: Bellamy is fast asleep in bed. He’d been fretting over nothing. He half-opens the door and sticks his head inside, knocking against the wood in the hope it might rouse Bellamy enough to snap him out of whatever dream or nightmare he’s stuck in. But the dark shape in the bed doesn’t move.

Murphy feels strange, standing here, looking at Bellamy in the bed; feels like some sort of creep or voyeur, even if all he’s doing is checking if Bellamy is alright. His face is turned away, so all Murphy can see of him are his curls, visibly matted with sweat in the dim light that slips in from the hallway. Murphy turns to go—then he hears a whimper.

Bellamy would hate for Murphy to see him like this. Murphy thinks that _he_ hates to see Bellamy like this, any and all illusions of strength shattered like the glass Murphy had dropped in the sink.

No. Not strength, he thinks. _Invulnerability._ Bellamy is still strong, he thinks. He’s just not invulnerable.

Then the whimper turns into another strangled yell—it’s loud, so loud they might hear it downstairs on the District 11 floor, so loud they might hear it all the way across the mountains and back home in District 12—and Murphy can’t bear to listen to it any longer. He rushes over to the bed, touches Bellamy gingerly by his sweat-dampened shoulders, tries to shake him awake—

—Only to end up pinned fast under Bellamy in the bed, with Bellamy’s knee digging into his chest and a knife pressed to his throat.

‘Whoa, Bellamy!’ Murphy squeaks, feeling the cold blade dig into the skin below his Adam’s apple. ‘Bellamy, it’s me—it’s Murphy!’

He manages to get a grip on Bellamy’s wrist, manages to wrench the hand holding the knife away from his throat.

‘…Murphy?’ Bellamy’s voice is still thick and patchy from sleep. The knife falls out of his hand and clatters on the floor, the sound of it splitting the tension that has filled up the room like tar. 

Bellamy snaps his fingers, and the lights come on. He’s still pressing Murphy into the bed, but he sits back immediately, blearily, his curls mussed against his forehead and his face shining with sweat. Then, his face tightens. His eyes narrow. He wakes up. 

‘Sorry,’ he mumbles. ‘For the knife. You surprised me. Did I… did I wake you?’

Murphy shakes his head. ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he says hoarsely. ‘You usually sleep with a knife under your pillow?’ Bellamy chooses not to answer that.

Murphy doesn’t need to ask if it was a nightmare. He’s had more than a few of his own since his father died, and it wasn’t as if he was the only one in District 12’s community home whose screams had sounded out in the night. ‘Do you… do you want to talk about it?’ he asks, feeling suddenly very daft as he does. Bellamy might barely be two years his senior, but he’s still his mentor in the Games. He's survived horrors Murphy can barely wrap his head around. How could _Murphy_ possibly help _him_?

Bellamy shakes his head. He’s fixing Murphy with that look again, the one he hates, the one that seems to be weighing up his chances of survival. Murphy thinks that maybe that’s the thing that he hates most about being tribute. Suddenly everyone has an opinion on him. Everyone seems to look at him and decide there and then what he’s worth, and whether he’ll live or die.

‘Want to see the roof?’ Bellamy asks him, suddenly, strangely. There’s a pointed look in his eye: _Don't ask why_. ‘The air might do us good.’

Oh. He’s so stupid. The place is bugged. Of course it’s bugged. If they’ve installed motion sensors to turn on and off the lights, it makes sense they’d install microphones, too. Anyone could be listening.

‘Sure,’ says Murphy, nodding.

Bellamy tosses Murphy a sweater from one of his drawers, before tugging one over his own head. 'Wouldn't want you catching a cold,’ he says, wry, echoing Murphy’s own words from only a few days earlier. And yet, the Reaping is as distant to him now as the day his father died and his mother dived to the bottom of the bottle, never to resurface. He feels like he’s somebody else entirely.

They take the elevator up to the roof in a comfortable sort of silence; at least, Bellamy looks comfortable. _Blank eyes in the dark, a knife pressed to his throat_. Murphy shakes the image free. His throat is fine, and if he has a knee-shaped bruise on his chest in the morning, well, he expects he'll have a fair few more serious injuries by the time the Games are over. What disturbs him the most is the knowledge that Bellamy—unflappable, gruff Bellamy—is plagued by nightmares, is haunted by the memories of his own Hunger Games. It makes sense, of course, when Murphy thinks about it, but he’d never really realised it before now: Bellamy might have won the Games, but he hasn’t escaped them. He won’t ever escape them. None of them will.

The wind is loud on the roof, tinkling through the wind chimes in the garden. A high wall surrounds them. It’s to stop anybody from jumping, Murphy realises, suddenly and sickeningly. He wonders why Bellamy has brought him here, but only briefly.

Bellamy nods to the wind chimes. ‘You don’t know who might be listening.’

He should have known the entire building was bugged. He whistles through his teeth, leans back against a pillar. It’s chilly up here, and he’s glad for the cashmere warmth of Bellamy’s sweater. ‘You about to tell me something top-secret, then, Bellamy?’ Murphy says, but in truth he’s terrified that Bellamy might be about to do just that.

Bellamy just sighs. ‘You have no idea what’s coming, do you, Murphy?’

Murphy might have been offended, once, but here and now—he knows that Bellamy’s right. He has no idea what’s coming. Neither he nor Bellamy speak of the nightmare, of the knife pressed to Murphy’s throat, but both of them are thinking about it.

‘Well, isn’t that what we have _you_ for?’ he asks, but there’s a crack in his devil-may-care façade, and he doesn’t know how to repair it. He’s beginning to feel naked, up here. There’s something about Bellamy that makes it hard for him to pretend.

‘Lucky you,’ Bellamy says darkly. ‘This is my fifth year as Dictrict 12’s mentor and I’ve got nothing but eight dead kids to my name.’

‘Bellamy,’ Murphy says, aghast, ‘you can’t possibly think that that’s your fault. That their deaths are on you—’

‘Well, I couldn’t save them, could I?’ he counters.

‘Nobody could save them,’ Murphy says. ‘They didn’t stand a chance.’

‘Well, if that’s the case, then nobody can save you,’ snaps Bellamy. ‘Or Charlotte—Christ. _Charlotte._ She’s so young. Younger than O was.’

‘I remember that,’ Murphy says, quietly. ‘When you volunteered.’

He had been thirteen. It had been his second reaping. And he remembers the sheer dizzy rush of _relief_ when he heard the name ‘Octavian Blake!’ called out over the square. Then, a sinking feeling in his gut, for Murphy had realised it was the kid he had been standing next to the whole time, a kid from his street, in his class; pale and grubby and dark-haired and shaking like a leaf. He remembers how Bellamy’s terrified voice had cut through the silence, had split the square in two. ‘I volunteer!’ he had all but shrieked, fifteen years old and already tall and broad as a full-grown man, rushing forward to wrench his baby brother free from the Peacekeepers’ grip. ‘I volunteer as tribute!’

Bellamy reaches up a hand and nudges one of the wind chimes. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Yeah, I didn’t think I stood a chance, either.’

‘You’re likeable,’ Murphy blurts out, suddenly, but it’s too late, and he can’t stop. ‘You’re good-looking, and strong. And if you didn’t stand a chance, then—then, how will I?’

Bellamy smirks, hollowly. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he says. ‘Sometimes it’s just luck, Murphy. It’s sheer, dumb luck.’

Murphy bristles. ‘Yeah, well. I’ve never exactly been lucky.’

‘I don’t know. You said you’re a survivor, didn’t you? We can sell a cocky underdog story. We can sell a survivor’s story.’

Murphy frowns. He doesn’t know why he says it, but he does. ‘You must have been relieved this year. When Octavian’s name wasn’t called.’

Bellamy stands up straight. There’s something brewing, Murphy thinks, something shifting behind his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he replies, ‘and no. Octavian might have escaped the Games only to go and find some other way to get himself into trouble.’

‘What does that mean?’

Bellamy doesn’t answer that. Instead he says, ‘Murphy, I’ve been thinking. About the wink. About Charlotte. And I think I know what to do.’

* * *

Over breakfast the following morning, Bellamy lays out his plan. ‘I’m going to try and set the two of you up as counterparts to one another,’ he says. ‘Once the Games begin, you’re on your own. But what we can do right now is make sure the audience is invested in you. They want a story, a narrative. They want somebody to root for. And, generally, they want somebody who can plausibly win. The two of you—well, District 12 in general—are not tipped to win. What we have to do is make the audience want to see you succeed anyway.’

He speaks with his hands, with a spark in his eyes. The weary Bellamy of the night before is gone; he seems almost a different man entirely. ‘Charlotte. You’re going to be cutesy, but you’re going to be determined. What you lack in strength, you make up for in charm and wits and guts. Murphy, you’re cocky. You’re assured. You’re a little mean. You’ve got nothing to lose, and everything to gain. But you’ve got to make Charlotte seem like your soft spot. That’ll make them like you. That’ll make you human. I want—I want a brother-sister dynamic.’

The two of them glance at one another over their cereal. ‘Okay,’ says Charlotte. ‘How do we do that?’

‘Can either of you fight? Don’t answer that. I already know. What do you think you could _learn_ to do?’ He pauses, brow furrowed. ‘Okay. Knife-throwing. Archery. Something that doesn’t require brute strength.’

‘You flatter us,’ says Murphy, but Bellamy ignores him. He’s right, anyway. Charlotte’s twelve and Murphy’s … scrawny. To put it kindly.

‘That’s what I want you to focus on,’ Bellamy decides.

‘Okay,’ says Charlotte. ‘But what if we get to the arena and there are no knives, and no bows?’

Bellamy takes a swig of coffee, and chooses not to answer that.

* * *

Murphy, it turns out, is not very good at knife-throwing. He usually hits the target, alright, but only the edges of it. And somehow he doubts a little dagger in the arm or leg will prove a fatal blow to anybody.

Charlotte, on the other hand, is a natural. It’s almost spooky, watching her with the knives; the blade buried in the bullseye every time. She has deft hands, and a keen eye, and for the first time Murphy notices that there’s a steeliness buried just underneath her wide eyes and quaver of a voice. For the first time, Murphy sees that despite her age and despite her size, she’s a competitor. And she hasn’t given up.

The rest of the tributes leer at them in the Training Centre, and Charlotte, for her part, only smiles sweetly back. Murphy’s got his eyes on the Careers, though. He hasn’t discussed it with Bellamy, but he thinks if he can get in with the Career tributes, at least at the beginning, he might stand a better chance.

Quickly, the frontrunners in the competition emerge. There’s Roan, a hulking boy from District 1, who, while appearing quite amicable, also looks like he could quite easily crush Murphy’s windpipe with his fist. The female tribute from District 1 is worse. Her name is Ontari, and there’s something vicious about her. She had volunteered for the Games, but he doesn’t think it was out of the goodness of her heart that she did. Sometimes he catches her looking at him thoughtfully, and while getting her attention is what he wants, he isn’t sure he likes what he sees in her gaze. Then, there’s Trina and Pascal from District 2, who have clearly been sleeping with one another. While both are strong fighters, he thinks they are maybe a little stupid and a lot doomed. Murphy also takes note of Atom and Monroe, from District 4, and Fox, from District 9, and Finn, from District 7. Most of the other tributes lift their weapons with shaking hands and wet eyes, and Murphy must squash any sympathy he feels at the sight of them. He can’t afford sympathy, not now and not in the arena. It is surprisingly easy, when his own life is on the line, to force himself to stop caring about their's—mostly.

It takes time, but he gets better at knife-throwing, and his aim with a bow is fair. He can hurl a hatchet like nobody’s business, and in hand-to-hand combat, he mightn’t be strong, but he’s slippery. He can take a hit, and fight back through the pain. Like a weasel, he squirms free of any grip, no matter how tight, and slips away. Sometimes he sees Bellamy watching him with the other mentors, and he feels a warmth rise to his cheeks.

But mainly, what Murphy can do is climb.

He has no idea where it came from—he certainly didn’t do a lot of climbing in District 12—but he’s good at it. A web of netting is suspended over the floor of the Training Centre, and Murphy can scale it and be all the way across the floor in a matter of minutes. The Gamemakers watch him from the viewing balcony, their eyes tracking his every move, but it doesn’t bother him. He doesn’t know why, but there’s something about climbing that puts him at ease; it’s just him, the netting, his hands and his feet. He’s careful, and he’s quick. Bellamy says he’s like a monkey, and Murphy isn’t sure if it’s meant as an insult or a compliment.

‘It doesn’t matter, anyway,’ he says. ‘Climbing won’t do me much good in the arena. I can’t _climb_ my way out of danger, at least not for long.’

‘Winning doesn’t always mean fighting, Murphy,’ Bellamy reminds him. ‘Sometimes, it comes down to surviving. To being the last one left alive.’

‘That won’t happen,’ Murphy dismisses him grimly. ‘It would make for pretty shitty television, wouldn't it?’

The change isn’t immediate, but the exercise and the good food quickly catches up with both Murphy and Charlotte. She seems to grow half an inch in a week, and he doesn’t look nearly as skinny as he had at the beginning. Neither of them are imposing, exactly, but they’re not quite as pathetic anymore.

Murphy doesn’t know if it means anything, but after that first night, he doesn't hear Bellamy’s screams again.

* * *

None of this changes the fact that Murphy struggles to sleep. He knows Bellamy is worried about it, because Bellamy is not in the business of mincing words, and he knows that Clarke is too, by the tightness to the set of her mouth as she tuts at his under-eye circles. Even Effie has begun to fret, dropping hints about sleeping pills even as she gushes to him about all the potential sponsors she’s been buttering up.

‘You’ll not last two minutes in the arena if you’re this sleep-deprived,’ Bellamy tells him, for what feels like the millionth time. He can only shrug.

‘I’m trying to sleep,’ he says. ‘I just—can’t.’

Instead of spending the hours tossing and turning restlessly, he takes to channelling his late night frenzy of energy into watching reruns of previous Games in the hope that he might pick up a trick or two. Mostly, it just wearies him further. He had never liked watching the Games at home—few in District 12 did, considering Bellamy was their first victor in years—so he had usually done his best to avoid them. Now, the blood and gore blurs before his bleary eyes. He barely sees the tributes of previous years as more than slabs of meat onscreen. Sometimes he’ll pause the TV, and look at his own hands, and wonder what they’ll look like splattered in red. Sometimes, he wonders what he’ll look like dead, how his corpse will fill the screen, how his sightless gaze will be seen by millions. He would like not to be unrecognisable. He would like to look human, even in death.

Then, about a week in, he settles down to his nightly ritual of televised horrors, and a familiar face flickers onscreen.

Bellamy’s Games.

Murphy leans forward on the little sofa, props his chin up on his knee.

He sees Bellamy sitting on Caesar Flickerman’s stage. The rerun pays the most attention to him, as the victor—most of the other tributes barely even get a mention. Caesar asks, ‘So Bellamy. How are you feeling about your chances? You’ve gotten the highest score in District 12’s history. Do you feel the odds are still stacked against you?’

Bellamy shrugs—relaxed, affable, smiling. ‘Come now, Caesar, I don’t think that’s fair. There’s a lot you can learn from mining coal. I’m just killer with a pickaxe.’

Caesar belly-laughs at that. Then, his face grows sombre. ‘You volunteered in place of your little brother, didn’t you, Bellamy? Can you tell us about him?’

Murphy sees the young Bellamy’s eyes shutter down, even as he keep smiling, smiling, smiling at Caesar Flickerman. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I just couldn’t let my baby brother have all the glory, now could I?’

‘Oh, of course not!’ says Caesar, brightly. ‘And what of that glory, huh? Any particular lady back home, or right here in the Capitol, that you’re looking to impress?’

Bellamy turns to the camera with a smouldering look. Even Murphy’s belly swoops; he’s sure hordes of girls around the Capitol must have fainted at the sight of it. ‘Oh, none at the moment,’ he says. He presses a hand to his chest, thoughtfully. ‘But I just know the special one for me is out there right now.’

Murphy wonders how many of Bellamy’s sponsors were ditzy Capitol girls—or boys—who believed that they themselves could be that very “special one”. He knows why the thought makes him feel so ill. Murphy hasn’t asked Bellamy about it, but he’s heard about what happens to the good-looking victors after they win the Games; it’s an open secret, something that everybody knows but nobody dares talk about. He wonders if Bellamy knew about that before he bet his chances on making half the Capitol fall in love with him. He wonders if Bellamy knew, and made that choice anyway: survival over freedom. Survival, over having a say on who he sleeps with and why. He hasn’t asked Bellamy, and he doesn’t think he will. 

The screen flickers. Bellamy’s Games were standard; a wooded arena, a grassy plain, a synthetic volcano in one corner that erupts midway through the Games and decimates half the arena to ash. Murphy remembers these Games more than he remembers any of the others. It was the first time in years that one of District 12’s tributes had made it to the final five—never mind both.

At the beginning of the Games, Bellamy stays alive alone, having braved the melée of the initial bloodbath in order to secure weapons and supplies; it’s alright for _him_ in the bloodbath, Murphy thinks as he watches, because even at fifteen Bellamy is tall and strong and capable. He throws a hatchet with such force that it embeds itself in the side of another tribute’s skull. Bellamy remains hidden in the wood, killing only when he must. There’s a brief pact with one of the Career tributes, Anya, whose fellows were all burned alive when the volcano erupted, but it lasts only until she tries to kill him in his sleep. Murphy watches as Bellamy wakes before she can finish the job, twisting out of her reach and snatching her own knife out of her hand, using it to slit her throat just as she had been hoping to slit his.

 _—Bellamy’s knee pressed into his chest. Bellamy’s knife at his throat._ No wonder he had reacted the way he did when Murphy shook him awake. Murphy still feels ill, but he keeps watching; truthfully he doesn’t think, at this point, that he can look away.

The Games end soon after that, quick and brutal, or so Murphy remembers. Left in the arena is Bellamy, the other District 12 tribute Maya—who hadn’t hurt a fly and had survived up until that point by sheer luck—and a vicious boy called Cage who had gone mad at the very beginning of the Games and had been picking off tributes and trying to eat them ever since. He was like something inhuman; the Gamemakers had had to shock him to stop him long enough for them to retrieve the bodies. The audience can tolerate slaughter, but they turn their noses up at cannibalism, apparently. An earthquake crowds the three of them into the plain, and Murphy lets the images of Bellamy’s white-eyed fear and desperation wash over him. He knows how this ends. It doesn't make watching it any easier.

The door to Murphy’s room opens, then. He jolts in fright, but Bellamy doesn’t say anything. He just glances between Murphy’s face, white in the glare of the TV, and his own ragged breathing captured on film five years earlier. Without a word, Bellamy pads barefoot to the sofa and nudges Murphy’s leg, squeezing in next to him. 

‘She was good,’ Bellamy says, when Maya’s matted brown curls and pale heart of a face flicker on screen. ‘Maya.’ Murphy glances over at him, his fine-featured profile rimmed in silver by the light of the screen. ‘She was good,’ he says again, quieter, as if he's mostly speaking to himself. Murphy looks back to the screen—to the finale.

This is how Bellamy Blake won the 66th annual Hunger Games:

Cage leaps for Maya, vicious, teeth bared and eyes maddened, and he closes his hands around her neck. Frantic, Bellamy runs to her rescue, but Cage has an axe at his belt, and he pauses long enough to take it in his hands and hurl it straight at Bellamy. It lands in his abdomen with a horrifying slicing sound, and sticks there; cutting through flesh, blood and guts spilling. When he screams in agony, folding in on himself, the sound curdles Murphy’s stomach, but Bellamy—the Bellamy of the here and now—doesn’t even flinch. Maya is dead. Cage stands, and lurches his way toward Bellamy, who is bent double in agony, holding in his own intestines.

Murphy knows what happens next. He's seen it before. And yet his heart is in his mouth, and his stomach is in knots, and he wants desperately to reach out and touch Bellamy’s—the _real_ Bellamy’s—arm, solid and safe next to him. He wants to reassure himself that he lived. The boy on the screen will survive it.

Through red-rimmed eyes, Bellamy sees Cage coming. He dislodges the axe from his own stomach; a wet squelch, a spray of red. With one hand holding in his guts and the other holding the axe, he rises to his feet. The ground underneath their feet begins to shake, yet the camera stays steady. Bellamy lifts the axe and swings it, hard, at Cage’s mad grin, his neck, bulging and ropy with tendons and veins. Cage is dead instantly, but Bellamy doesn’t stop.

He screams, and he bears down on Cage’s body, and with one hand he keeps pushing the blade of the axe down by the blunt end until it severs right through, and Cage’s head comes away from his shoulders with a wet crunch.

Bellamy drops the child’s head just as the victory trumpets begin to blare.

A warm hand is on Murphy’s, prising the remote from his cold fingers. Bellamy lifts it, and turns off the TV. The two of them are left sitting next to one another in the dark.

‘Any questions?’ Bellamy asks, a shaky whisper in the silent room.

‘No,’ says Murphy. ‘Unless you have any answers.’

Bellamy snorts a laugh, a laugh with neither humour nor heart in it. ‘You should sleep, Murphy.’

‘Do _you_ sleep?’

‘Fair point.’ Bellamy leans his head back on the chair and crosses his arms over his chest with a sigh. ‘When you’re in there,’ he says, quiet, ‘you’ll do anything to stay alive. It drove Cage mad. And it drove me mad, too, at the end.’

‘But you came back,’ Murphy says. Bellamy had walked that cliff-edge, had gazed into that abyss, had cut another person’s head from his shoulders and it has made him harsh and hard and prickly and gruff, but he's still human.

‘Yeah. And sometimes I wonder if it would’ve been better if I hadn’t.’ He sits forward. ‘Nights I can’t sleep, I go to the roof. You should too. I know I say it a lot, but fresh air works wonders in clearing the head.’

Murphy just nods. His eyelids are feeling heavy, now, a week of sleepless nights catching up with him. He sinks lower in the chair as Bellamy rises.

‘Oh no. Up you come,’ Bellamy says, and hoists him up off the chair by the arm. ‘To _bed_ , Murphy. Get some rest. You’ll need it.’

‘I know,’ Murphy whispers.

Bellamy doesn't tell him that it’ll be alright. Bellamy doesn't tell him that he’ll survive. Bellamy doesn't lie.

‘Goodnight, Murphy,’ is all that Bellamy says to him; not as victor, nor as mentor. Just a sad shadow in the doorway.

* * *

The next night that Murphy can't sleep, he goes back to the roof. Bellamy is there, reading from a tablet under the wind chimes, the white light catching on the dimple in his chin.

‘Ancient history books,’ he explains. ‘From way before the foundation of Panem. Very boring. Knocks me right out. Did you know that the Roman emperor Caligula tried to give his favourite horse the highest possible position in government?’

‘I did not know that,’ says Murphy. He cannot say he is especially fascinated by tales of long-extinct empires, but he looks at the tablet in Bellamy’s hands, and he wants to think about anything at all that isn't fighting, that isn't killing. ‘Read me some,’ he says, and Bellamy laughs, and he does.

Every night Murphy can't sleep for dread, he goes to the roof, and every night Bellamy is there. They never talk about the Games, or the Capitol, or even Charlotte. That world may as well not exist.

Instead, Bellamy will tell him about some random fact he discovered in his books, or Murphy will tell Bellamy about his favourite recipes from when he helped out in the kitchen of the community home. Bellamy tells Murphy about poaching, about his mother, about Octavian. And in those sleepless hours, huddling in sweaters, the wind in their hair and wind chimes sounding, Murphy isn't tribute and Bellamy isn't mentor. Bellamy’s just a kid from the Seam, just the same as Murphy is. For a short while Murphy gets to forget that he has no future. Murphy gets to forget that he’s a dead man walking.

And after about an hour of that every night? Well. He sleeps like a baby.

* * *

District 12 is always last to show the Gamemakers their skills. This proves something of an issue for Murphy, as the Gamemakers all look bored silly by the time his private session rolls around, chatting amongst themselves, dozing, yawning. Shaking off his unease, Murphy climbs the netting above the floor, scaling it in a matter of seconds, and, while hanging upside down, he throws his knife at a mannequin from above.

First shot bounces off the floor. His hair standing on end with gravity and his hips swinging as he dangles, Murphy suppresses the curse word that sits on the tip of his tongue. He slips the second knife out of his belt. He takes a long breath, and lines up his shot carefully. Then he doesn’t so much throw the knife, as simply let it go.

 _Lucky shot_ , he thinks in disbelief, all the blood rushing to his head. The handle of the knife glints where it protrudes from the mannequin’s stuffed skull.

The Gamemakers look less than impressed, but they’ve shut up, at least. All their eyes are on him.

Charlotte goes in straight after he comes out, and emerges looking frazzled and upset only minutes later. She doesn’t tell anyone what happened in her session, not even Bellamy or Wells, and she’s very quiet at dinner, which disturbs all of them. Even Effie is chewing at her lip by the time the televised scores are starting.

‘Your scores don’t matter all that much,’ Bellamy reminds them. ‘They’re only an indication. The kid who won last year got a three. Remember that.’

‘You got an eight,’ Murphy reminds him.

‘And it hardly made a lick of difference to me what I scored once I was in there,’ Bellamy shoots back.

‘Hush,’ says Effie, sternly. ‘It’s starting.’ Clarke squeezes Murphy’s arm reassuringly as they all gather close to watch.

The faces of the tributes flash onscreen, next to the number they’ve been given.

 **ONTARI: 10**. Murphy could have predicted that. His stomach churns at the sight of her vicious grin beaming down at them, and he only feels more and more queasy as the Districts rack up onscreen.

Bellamy claps him over the back as the number flashes onscreen next to his face and name: **MURPHY: 7**. They’ve dropped the “John” at Bellamy’s request, but mostly because there’s a tall, kind-eyed boy from District 11 who is also named John and they want to avoid any mix-ups. A 7 is very respectable. It mightn’t help him, but it certainly won’t hinder him. A kid from District 9 scored a two, and another from District 6 got a measly 1, so he’s hardly going to grumble.

His own face looks unfamiliar to him in the headshot. He’s glowering, but that isn’t it. He thinks maybe that he’s struggling to reconcile the Murphy he’s inhabited for eighteen years to the scowl of a boy on the screen who owns only a name and number.

Then: **CHARLOTTE: 12.**

Effie nearly falls off her chair, squealing like a stuck pig in glee. At that Charlotte begins to grin, a little, and Murphy pats her on the back in congratulations—though inside, he’s reeling a little with shock. 12? That’s unheard of, even for a Career tribute. He has no idea what Charlotte did to get a perfect score.

Next to him, both Clarke and Wells look a little spooked.

Then, Bellamy turns off the TV. He’s not smiling. He turns to her, and he looks afraid. ‘Charlotte,’ he says, ‘what did you do in there?’

She looks down at her lap. ‘I, well…’ she pauses. ‘I got mad.’

‘What do you mean, Charlotte?’ Wells asks.

‘They weren’t looking at me. They weren’t paying attention,’ she says. ‘So I screamed. And I threw the knives at all the mannequins in there. Some so hard that it knocked their heads off.’

There’s a beat of silence at that.

‘They must have liked your spark,’ says Clarke, reassuring, calm. 

Murphy sees her shake her head at Bellamy from over the top of Charlotte’s head.

* * *

After Charlotte goes to bed, Murphy follows Bellamy to the roof, surrounded at all sides by the bustle of the city, and he asks him what it means. Bellamy leans against the wall by the wind chimes and looks Murphy in the eye.

‘They’ve given her a perfect score,’ he says, ‘to slap a target straight onto her back. The Careers will hunt her down and slaughter her.’

‘Why did they do that? Because she got mad?’

‘No. Because she got mad at _them_. I don’t know, maybe they do like her spark; I imagine they like the idea of it, the stir they’re causing. That little slip of a girl with a perfect killing score. Who knows? But it’s not a good thing, not for her.’ He scrubs his hand through his hair and Murphy realises he cares for her.

Of course. Of course Bellamy cares for her. Bellamy cares for him too, he knows, knows with a sudden and heartrending clarity. Bellamy cares for both of them and in a few days he’s going to watch both of them die. And sure, Murphy would rather be in Bellamy’s shoes right now than his own, would rather be the one _watching_ the dying rather than the person _doing_ the dying—and yet. And yet.

‘Will this ever get easier for you?’ Murphy asks him.

‘Will what get easier?’

‘Surviving,’ Murphy says simply.

The wind tinkles through the wind chimes. Bellamy looks as if Murphy has slapped him. His lips part, his eyes go wide. Then he huffs a laugh, stony and bitter. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No. It will never, ever, get any fucking easier.’

* * *

Charlotte looks nice in her red dress, blonde hair braided back in what is becoming her signature style, her face clear of all but the most simple makeup: a black line that extends out from the outer corner of each eye to her temple. It’s striking, and it’ll remind the audience of Charlotte and Murphy’s showstopping lap around the Victory Circle, gleaming like diamonds, their eyes painted black. Wells hasn’t attempted to make her look any older than she is, which is a relief; the girl from District 6 is all of fourteen years old and wearing little more than scraps. Ontari is also dressed skimpily, but in her case it works. It’s clear the angle that she’s going for: the cocktail of sexy-yet-dangerous that goes down a treat in the Capitol year after year.

Clarke has dressed him in a sleek dark suit, of a similar material to the outfit he wore during the chariot lap, with red patches sewn onto his shoulders. His eyes are lined with black in a similar pattern to Charlotte. She’s highlighted his cheekbones, and twisted his hair back from his face. It makes him look a little haughty, he thinks, but it’s the hairstyle he’s going to have in the games and she wants to keep him recognisable. ‘So it doesn’t get in your eyes,’ she tells him, gently.

In less than twenty-four hours, he’ll be in the arena. He feels nothing but dread.

'Fake it 'til you make it,' Clarke tells him, adjusting his collar. 'You can do this.'

Charlotte’s interview goes well—Murphy knows this only because it’s the single interview he pays attention to. Caesar Flickerman, the presenter, is kind with her, asking her all sorts of sweet questions that make the audience all go _aw_. It’s grotesque, Murphy thinks, how they coo over a girl that they’re about to kill, like a predator toying with its prey. Then Caesar asks her about her perfect score, and she just smiles, bashfully. ‘It’s a secret!’ she chirps.

Then he’s up.

Murphy feels like he’s slipping into another skin as he steps onstage, like he’s fixing another face on top of his own, and to his surprise, he doesn’t hate it. _Fake it ‘til you make it_ , he hears Clarke say again, her voice echoing in his ears, drowning out the roars of the crowd, the flashing lights. And he _can_ fake it, he realises. He can do this. He fixes the screaming crowd with a bored, haughty sort of look, before greeting Caesar and taking his seat.

‘So Murphy,’ says Caesar. ‘That’s your surname, isn’t it? Why do you choose to go by Murphy, rather than John?’

‘Do I look like a _John_ to you?’ Murphy drawls, casting a cold eye out over the crowd, and cocking a single eyebrow. ‘A kid called _John_ sounds like he would trip on his laces and land on his own knife not two minutes into the Games.’ He pulls a faux-apologetic grimace, dripping with mockery. ‘I mean, no offence to District 11.’

The crowd roars with laughter and jeers. If Murphy should feel bad, well, he doesn’t. That’s not the Murphy whose face he wears now. That’s not the Murphy who winks at the camera. That’s not the Murphy who survives.

‘Well,’ Caesar stage-whispers, ‘don’t whisper a word of this to District 11, but I do think Murphy suits you _much_ better than John. The Capitol is a long long way from District 12, Murphy. How have you been finding it?’

‘Great food, terrible showers,’ Murphy grunts. ‘I mean, who needs that many buttons, huh?’

‘Oh I _know_ ,’ says Caesar, ‘Just the other day I sprayed myself in the eye with perfume, and I grew up here! Imagine!’

‘The Games? No problem,’ says Murphy. ‘But the showers? I’m in trouble.’

The crowd goes wild with laughter. He doesn’t think it was that funny, but he’s glad he’s getting a reaction, even as he ignores it, even as he pretends he can’t hear it.

‘Now you simply must share,’ says Caesar, leaning forward as if he wants Murphy to tell him a secret. ‘What do _you_ think of fellow District 12 tribute little Charlotte, and her perfect score? Were you surprised?’

Murphy is pulled up short by that. He sucks in a breath.

What _does_ he think of Charlotte? The sight of her in her blood-red dress, sitting on Caesar’s couch only minutes earlier… The thought of her in the Games… She’s his competitor, she’s his enemy, and yet he doesn’t resent her for her perfect score, for her blade that hits the bullseye every time.

He realises that, more than anything else, he’s afraid _for_ her.

‘I wasn’t surprised,’ Murphy says, and if a strange new softness creeps into his tone, well. He’s just playing the game the way Bellamy told him to. ‘She’s a fighter, you know. I was just like her when I was that age.’

‘Sounds like you care about her,’ Caesar prompts.

‘Yeah well,’ says Murphy. ‘I grew up in the community home. I always wished I had someone who looked out for me back then. I guess I’ll just have to look out for her, now.’ His time is slipping away, and he thinks that’s quite enough vulnerability to temper his façade of arrogance, so he sits up straight and _smirks_ at Caesar, smirks out at the crowd. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I think District 12 has been forgotten about in the Games for a long time. I mean, Bellamy—’ His breath catches in his throat, but he swallows it, and keeps smirking, keeps going— ‘Bellamy was our first winner in years. But I don’t think anyone will be forgetting about District 12 this time around.’

‘No,’ Caesar agrees. ‘We certainly will not.’

Then his time is up, and he’s stepping off the stage and back to his seat, and he doesn’t even feel relieved.

Because the version of Murphy that he’s wearing now, the version of him that survives this—that Murphy doesn’t feel anything at all.

* * *

Murphy doesn’t sleep well the night before the Games.

He goes to the roof, but there’s no shadow by the wind chimes, no reassurance in the night, no friendly face in the garden. Bellamy isn’t there.

He doesn't sleep, but the time slips away anyway, and then it's morning and it's breakfast and he tries to eat because he doesn’t know when he’ll get the chance again and a tracker is injected into his arm and he's been herded with Clarke into the hovercraft knowing he’s nothing more than a lamb being flown to slaughter. Time is up. There's nothing left for him to do, except survive.

* * *

He’s in the Launch Room, and both Clarke and Bellamy are here to see him off; Bellamy’s already given Charlotte her last pep-talk, and Wells is in with her now. Murphy tries to stop pacing, tries to conserve all the energy he can; but mostly he needs the rhythmic movement to help him keep his breakfast down. Bellamy doesn’t mention his absence on the roof the night before, and nor does Murphy: they’ve got more important things to discuss now, anyway.

‘Remember, I’m going to be here the whole time. I’ve already got sponsors lined up for the both of you, Murphy. You’re not completely on your own. Just keep playing the game: cocky, self-assured, cool.’ He pauses. ‘I’m not gonna tell you to keep up the big brother act,’ he says, grimacing. ‘Charlotte’s your enemy now. But whatever you do, Murphy, you’ve got to play to the cameras. Spin a story, build a narrative, survive. Play a part. _Play their Game_.’

Murphy hardly hears him.

Then Bellamy’s got his hand on his shoulder. ‘Murphy,’ he says, and the low timbre of his voice is a balm against Murphy’s frayed nerves. He thinks that, unlike the chanting spectators, unlike the commentators, unlike Caesar Flickerman or even Effie Trinket, his name feels safe in Bellamy’s mouth. Bellamy’s hand on his shoulder is the last kind touch he’ll feel, he realises, and suddenly he doesn’t feel ill anymore. He feels afraid.

There’s a part of him, too, that’s so very glad it’s Bellamy’s hand. If he _is_ to die—though he’s determined, _determined_ , that he won’t—though he’s a realist at heart and he fears determination is worth nothing to him now—well. He doesn’t think there’s anyone else he’d rather have here with him at the end.

‘Any last words of wisdom?’ he manages to say.

Bellamy smiles, faintly. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘You’ll survive.’ The hand on Murphy’s shoulder squeezes. ‘Whatever happens in there, Murphy,’ he says then, ‘I want you to remember that it doesn’t define you.’

He’s shaking, and he wishes he wasn’t; he wishes he could be strong and stoic and brave, but his emotions have always run so close to the surface, tears always ready to spill, and it’s all he can do to keep from falling apart before the Games have even begun.

‘Murphy,’ says Clarke, and he jumps. He’d almost forgotten she was there. ‘It’s almost time.’

He feels unreal again, and he’s glad of it. Better to shed his scruples now, better to squash all his terror down so far that he forgets its name. Better to survive without dwelling on what it’s going to cost him.

‘Your father’s medal,’ says Clarke. She tucks it into the pocket hidden in the lining of his jacket. The familiar weight of it settles against his heart. ‘I thought you might like to have it as your token. Good luck,’ she whispers, and he sees that she’s got tears in her eyes. Then she stands on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to his cheek, and he thinks about how nice it is that he has somebody who’ll miss him.

He stands on the circle in the centre of the floor.

‘Wait,’ says Bellamy. Murphy feels so out of it he hardly notices that Bellamy is coming toward him until he’s wrapping his arms around Murphy in a solid, safe embrace, steady as a rock. Murphy digs his fingers into Bellamy’s shoulders. He smells synthetic Capitol shampoo, and underneath, barely there, faint and probably imagined, the smell of home. Smoke and the colour of the sky at sunset. Coal dust in his nails.

‘You’re a survivor,’ Bellamy murmurs into his ear. ‘That’s all you have to do, Murphy. _Survive_.’

Then—too soon, it’s too soon, he’s not ready to go, he’s not ready for this—Bellamy is stepping back with a smile that’s hollow and wet-eyed—he gives Murphy the old salute of District 12, presses his three fingers to his lips, lifting them in goodbye—and there’s a glass tube extending down from the roof and Murphy’s rising, rising—Clarke and Bellamy are out of sight and the sunlight is blinding him—

A scraggly, rocky plain, interspersed with tall pillars of stone. The golden gleam of the cornucopia, lumpy with supplies. He’s in the centre of a semi-circle of tributes. The deafening boom of the announcer’s voice nearly shatters his eardrums and his nerves both.

‘Ladies and gentlemen! Let the Seventy-First Hunger Games begin!’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading! kudos and comments are endlessly appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ:  
> i’ve actually upped the rating to mature as this chapter got darker than i had anticipated. all previous warnings (graphic violence, threat of non-con) still apply. i want to add warnings for vomiting, for reference to suicide. there’s also some talk of weight loss due to conditions in the arena, just in case that might trigger anyone.
> 
> the big warning is that bellamy's non-consensual sex work that was touched upon in the previous chapter is discussed in a little bit more depth in this one--nothing graphic but the implication is there. if you've read the hunger games, it's a similar situation to that of finnick. i hope i have handled this appropriately and sensitively but if not please do not hesitate to let me know and i will do my best to rectify it.
> 
> if any of these issues affect you in any way, please proceed with caution and stay safe x

When Murphy was ten years old, his father was killed in the mines. This is not a sob story: this is just a story. This is just a life and its stark and sudden end. He was told his father was killed in an explosion— _a_ _livid wall of flame comes rushing toward him in the narrow dark_ —and that there wasn't enough of him left to be worth burying.

He remembers the knock on the door, the Peacekeeper’s dark look. He remembers hearing crying on the street; more than one father had been in the wrong mine shaft at the wrong time. He remembers how he had helped his mother sit down, how he had held her hand in her shock, remembers how calloused her skin felt against his own. But mostly he remembers how his mind felt as though it were splitting in two—one part was just blank, reeling shock; a dark look at the door, a hand held in his own. The other part of him was smaller, a voice so tiny he could hardly hear it, piping up from one of his mind’s hidden corners: _Dad’s dead. Nothing can ever be the same._

Murphy got a medal from the mayor and a tearful squeeze from his mother. He got to keep the medal but not the mother.

 _Nothing can ever be the same._

Now he looks out at the arena, and he knows that in just a moment, everything has changed. He’s in the Games now. His name will go down in history and his face will be broadcast to millions. And it doesn't matter if he lives or dies, not really, because either way, nothing will ever be the same.

He wonders in that moment—trapped in the narrow mine, no escape, looking at the searing glow of flame that came speeding towards him in the dark—if his father was afraid to die. Did he see death coming, or was he taken by surprise?

Will Murphy see his death coming? Or will he be taken by surprise? He would like, he thinks, not to be afraid. But now, in this moment, he thinks fear is all he has.

He has sixty seconds before he can step off the podium. He has sixty seconds before the Games begin. That’s all.

Yet after about ten of those seconds, after twenty excruciating, rapid-fire thumps of his heart, something strange happens to him. All the panic, all the terror, all the fear that splits open his nerves—it all melts away. He hears Bellamy’s voice echo in his head like a prayer: ‘ _Survive_.’

‘Survive,’ he whispers.

And then, in all the places where his fear lived, he feels nothing but a crystal-clear clarity, a clean sharpness to his vision and his hearing and his touch—taste—smell—mind. He draws in a deep breath. Time slows to a crawl.

They stand in a rocky plain of reddish sandstone, interspersed with scraggly bushes, and those strange high pillars of rock he’d spotted earlier, standing about three times Murphy’s own height. He sees, too, strange dark holes in the ground, big enough to fit one or two people; he can’t tell how deep the holes go, or whether they’re meant to be hidey-holes or traps. The sun is bright overhead, and there’s heat in it. Some distance away, he sees a copse of tall, thin trees and high grasses; the rest of the arena seems pretty exposed, so it’s nice to have the opportunity for cover. And at the other end of the arena, there’s a glittering blue lake. Okay. He turns back to the cornucopia that lies ahead. There are stuffed backpacks and canisters of water under the lip, some scattered a short way away, but he doesn’t see any weapons—no. He sees the weapons.

They’re all lined up in a row; 24 of them, one for each tribute. His stomach drops.

 _‘Ten._ ’

Stout short wooden maces, each embedded with wicked metal spikes. And, next to them, a row of 24 perfectly round shields, all made of some silver metal, glinting in the sun.

‘ _Nine_.’

No bows, no knives, no long-range weapons. They’ve given them only maces and shields. He doesn’t panic; he’s not all that strong, but he’s fast, and the maces are clearly lacking in reach what they make up for in brutality. They can’t kill him if they can’t catch him.

‘ _Eight_.’

Anyway, he doesn’t think that he’d have to be very strong at all to do damage with those; even from a distance, the spikes look devilishly jagged and sharp.

‘ _Seven._ ’

Brave the initial bloodbath, or run for cover? Bellamy had instructed him to use his own judgement, but encouraged him to avoid the initial melée, telling him it generally wasn’t worth the risk. Murphy doesn’t think he’s established enough of a rapport with any of the Career tributes to trust that they won’t try to kill him instantly, even if he had made Ontari laugh once or twice with a mean comment during training—

‘ _Six_.’

He sees a backpack that lies a couple of metres away from the cornucopia’s heart; he decides he’ll run for it, then make a break for the cover of the trees. He’s not Bellamy. He won’t last three minutes in the fray of the bloodbath.

‘ _Five_.’

He doesn’t feel scared.

‘ _Four_.’

He readies himself to run.

‘ _Three_.’

He doesn’t feel scared.

‘ _Two._ ’

In fact, he feels nothing at all.

‘ _One_.’

Then he’s running.

He’s not the fastest there, and that’s a good thing. He sees them coming.

He slows, breathless with terror. 

Great black cats—bigger than a horse, like fluid dark shadows against the red sandstone—rise up out of the hidey-holes like the earth is vomiting them out. They’re huge, rippling with muscles, all teeth and claws, and Murphy feels like his heart might stop there and then. The arena—it’s a lion’s den, almost literally. There will be no bloodbath between tributes this year—it’ll be between the tributes and these mutts, these monsters.

And just as Murphy comes to a frozen stop, one of the big cats reaches the female District Six tribute. Murphy cannot look away; he watches in mute horror as the creature tears her head from her shoulders in a spray of red as easily as a child pulls the head from a plastic doll.

 _Fuck_ _fuck fuck fuck fuck!_ on repeat is echoing through his head—but only for a fraction of a second. He can’t afford any longer than that, because he needs to _think_.

He knows two things:

He can’t fight these panthers—they’re huge, he’s unarmed, he won't reach the maces in time—nor can he outrun them.

Barely a second has passed, but time feels like it has slowed to a trickle. Murphy is paralysed with terror. He feels it roar in his ears and flare out through his nose.

He has to _think!_

A panther turns. Yellow, yellow eyes. He sees it. It sees him. Then it starts to run.

His feet are moving before his head has told them to. He careens to the left, supercharged with adrenaline, every inch of him seared with it, and he nearly collides with one of the tall pillars of red rock that juts high against the vast, baby-blue plain of the sky.

 _Why the hell have they put these here?!_ Murphy wants to scream, making to run around the obnoxious obstacle—

—Why _are_ the pillars here?

There must be a reason. Nothing in the Games is ever arbitrary. He looks up, where loops of rope circle the red stone—why? Why tie rope around the stone? Why would they set them loose in a lion’s den scattered with great big columns that block their escape, if there wasn’t a reason for it? 

If the pillars weren't his ticket to that very same escape?

He takes a chance.

They’ve been kitted out with fingerless gloves, and Murphy’s bare fingers scrape painfully against the rough surface of the stone; he grips the rope, jamming the toes of his boots into grooves in the rock, and pulls himself up. He barely feels the scrape of it; pain is a luxury to him now, and one he cannot currently afford. Climbing this rock is so much harder than climbing the netting in the Training Centre, and not just because of the lack of easy grip; Murphy thinks sheer fright might be the only thing that keeps him going, keeps him climbing, keeps him clinging to the stone, pushing him higher and higher and—

He hears a scream. He pauses, already six, seven feet in the air. He knows that voice—small, and sweet, and quavering.

Charlotte—there, visible from a little way away! Running toward his pillar—she’s too small. The panther that had been chasing him has changed course; its long strides eat up the ground as it bounds towards her. She won’t reach in time. She’s going to die; that overgrown cat will shred her skin like paper. They’ll have to tape her back together in order to mail her home to District 12 in a box for her father to wail over.

With one hand he clings to the stone, fist clenched around the rope. The other he stretches down, reaches for her. ‘Charlotte!’ he yells; voice splitting open with hysteria. ‘Over here!’

She looks up. Brown eyes fix upon his outstretched palm.

She leaps. So does the panther.

Hand around her wrist—slippery grip—blood on the stone—his knuckles are bleeding where they press to the hard, jagged surface of the rock, his fingers wrapped around the rope with a vice-grip. There’s a moment where he slides—foot slips loose—balance tipped. A scatter of pebbles fall. He jams his toe back in place, and breathless, unreal, sick with adrenaline, he pulls _up up_ **_up_** —he’s not strong—but she’s not heavy. Then he scrambles higher, one arm around her shoulders as she climbs with him, the two of them frantic and frazzled and breathless.

Teeth snap shut on thin air, inches from the heel of Charlotte’s boot.

The cat falls back with a yowl, and though it leaps again and again, it cannot reach him and Charlotte. Its claws cannot grip the sandstone, even as swipes of its paws slice through the loops of rope below their feet with ease.

Murphy’s instincts were right. They didn’t design the arena like this for no reason. The panther-mutts can’t climb.

No time to be relieved. The panther is still too close for comfort, springing up again and again in its attempt to reach them.

The two of them together keep climbing higher up the pillar, terror chasing their steps the whole way to the top, not daring to look down where the black cat snarls and hisses and paces in circles around the column's base. The summit of the pillar is broad enough to sit three or more; the two of them don’t stop climbing until they reach it. Sun beaming down, Charlotte trembling against his side, the ground with all its teeth a dizzying drop below, Murphy cranes his head to look in all directions, to take in the carnage and the chaos.

Some of the bigger, faster tributes have reached the cornucopia and the weapons in time; Murphy watches as the enormous boy Roan from District One fights with one of the cats, wielding his mace like an expert. It collides with the panther’s head, and Murphy sees it fall, limp, to the ground, neck shattered by the force of Roan's swing. Ontari is there, too, atop the cornucopia, her face already splattered with red blood, none of it her own. He sees another girl, a girl he can’t name, be shred open, guts bursting free like springs from a toybox. He doesn't look away. A few other tributes have also attempted to climb the pillars, but not all reached the top in time; the boy from District 10 clings to the stone for dear life as a panther closes its jaws around his foot, and chomps down. Murphy turns back to the cornucopia, sees Roan bash one panther with his shield, and mace another between the shoulder blades; he fights like he was born to do it, and Murphy realises just how out of his depth he really is.

‘Thank you,’ Charlotte whispers.

She’s staring down at the panther that still prowls around the base of their pillar, her eyes showing far too much white.

It occurs to Murphy that he didn’t have to save her. It occurs to Murphy that he could just grab her by the shoulders and throw her to her death, right here and right now. There’s nothing stopping him, not really. Worse has been done in the Games. Worse will be done.

‘Don’t mention it,’ he says, and bumps his shoulder against her side.

He can’t toss her to the panthers. He doesn’t know why—God knows he shouldn’t care—but he does. He’ll do what must be done, but he won’t do that. Besides, he thinks, looking out at the arena, at the prowling cats and the bodies that smear the stone with red; there’ll be time yet for killing. There’ll be time yet to die.

* * *

He and Charlotte make a break for the woods as soon as their panther loses interest; turning instead to where the six Career-pact tributes alone stay standing. They’ve been using others as human shields, tossing them to the snapping teeth and razor claws. The shields they were given seem to be all but useless, the panthers having shredded the metal into strips. Murphy hasn’t bothered counting the bodies because they’ll be shown on the sky tonight. He can take stock of the dead then. 

He leaps half of the distance down, and catches Charlotte as she follows; it’s the quickest descent they can manage. Then they sprint, Murphy making a couple metres’ worth of a detour so he can snag a backpack on the way—not the one he had been hoping for, it’s pretty small, and it’ll have to do both him and Charlotte—but it’s better than nothing. The ground is peppered with deep holes, the holes that the panthers emerged from, but he doesn’t have time to examine any too closely. The two of them don’t dare to stop, don’t dare to look behind them, as they run for the cover of the woods, step into the dappled green, into the hush of living things.

‘We need to keep going,’ he tells Charlotte, as soon as the cornucopia and the cats are out of sight. ‘Put some distance between us and the Careers.’

She glances up at him. A strand of hair has come loose from her braid. He wonders how dishevelled he must look, with his bleeding fingers, his clothes coated in red dust. The Games have barely begun. He imagines the both of them will look a lot worse by the time they’re over.

‘So we’re doing this?’ she says.

‘Doing what?’

‘An alliance. I thought…’

He doesn’t meet her gaze, keeps pushing forward into the woods. The trees here are tall and thin, not like they are at home, but still buzzing with noise, with life. Neither of them were particularly good with snares and traps in the Training Centre, but he guesses they’ll just have to do their best. They have to eat.

‘We can say goodbye here,’ he tells her. ‘If you want, Charlotte. I don’t want to kill you, so I won’t.’

‘I don’t want to kill you, either,’ she says. Her brow is furrowed. ‘I guess we could see. Stick together for a few days. Until the competition thins out. Then we should split up. What do you think Bellamy would want us to do?’

He sniffs. _Survive._ ‘Bellamy would want us to do whatever gives us the best chance.’

She nods. ‘Right. We should find water. It’s pretty hot.’

‘Hold on,’ he says. He tugs her behind the cover of a tree, and cranes his neck to look around; just yellow sunlight filtering down from every direction. These scrubby woods could almost be peaceful. Almost. ‘We’d better see what we have here.’

In the backpack is a metal canister of water, enough rationed between them to last maybe two days, and a small vial of iodine for purifying more; some dried meat that Murphy knows won’t last a day; a length of rope; and a sleeping bag. No weapons. He doesn’t curse.

‘I don’t think they’ve given any of us weapons apart from the maces and shields at the cornucopia,’ he says. ‘And the shields are useless—I saw one of those panthers tear half of them to shreds.’

‘Yeah. And the maces are fine for you,’ says Charlotte, ‘but I don’t think I’m strong enough to use them.’

‘We’ll figure something else out,’ says Murphy. He hands her the canister of water; she’s clever enough only to take a sip without him having to instruct her to save it. He thinks again that, despite her youth and her small size, she’s smart and capable enough to survive on her own. If either of them could get ahold of a knife, or even a bow and arrow, then maybe they’d have more of a chance.

He sighs, and accepts the canister as she hands it back to him. The water is like liquid heaven as he lets a measly sip run over his papery tongue, feels its soothing, cool trickle down his bone-dry throat. The canister won’t last half as long as he’d hoped. More water, then. That’s their priority.

They’re lucky; they find the brook, bubbling up through a crack in a low, scrubby cliff, just before nightfall. Not a soul meets them on the way, and they finish the water they have between them before refilling their canister and leaving it to purify.

‘I’d been worried that the lake was the only water source in the arena,’ Murphy tells Charlotte. He can’t help but stay worried; it’s a semi-desert arena they’ve been thrown into, and he’s got no doubt that the Gamekeepers will conspire some way to throw all the remaining tributes back together again before long; the number one rule of the Games, after all, isn’t really _kill or be killed_ —it’s _don’t be boring while you do._

Murphy hears the first cannon sound just as he walks around behind a tree to take a piss. He lets out a breath in the deepening dusk. He counts: _one, two, three, four..._

Thirteen cannons. Thirteen dead. Eleven left to play. Thirteen children, thirteen lives; snuffed out in half a day. He doesn’t dwell on it. Neither does Charlotte, where she lingers by the water, running her fingers through the sparkling brook as it bubbles up out of the earth.

The dead tributes’ faces are projected up onto the night sky once it gets dark. No surprises as to who lived and died, aside from one of the Career tributes, Atom from District Four, having succumbed to the panthers after Murphy and Charlotte had fled. Murphy offers to take the first watch. Both of them stay on the ground; which has Murphy feeling nervous, but Charlotte is right—there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t fall out of the tree if they tried to sleep there, and the branches are too narrow to trust that a single twitch wouldn’t send them plummeting to their deaths.

He leans against the tree while she dozes in the sleeping bag. He can see next to nothing in the dark. Every crackle of dry leaves, every hoot and chirp, every cicada-cry, has him readying himself to fight or flee. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if something _does_ go bump in the night; he’s unarmed, and not exactly imposing. Not for the first time, he wishes there was a bow, a knife, anything—he'd even be happy with one of those short-range maces at this point—in the backpack. Unarmed, he feels practically naked.

He hears the machine beep before he sees the red glow of the parachute. Years of watching the Games have made him familiar with that noise. He hisses a cheer through his teeth and scales the tree at his back several feet up in order to reach the package faster, his heart thumping hard against his ribs with anticipation. Bracing himself against the trunk with his knees, he opens the capsule with trembling fingers.

**COULD ONLY GET ONE FOR NOW.**

**SURVIVE. B**

Bellamy’s sent them a knife; a solid length, a good weight for throwing, with a smooth, easy-to-grip handle and a slight curve to the blade, gleaming in the red light of the capsule. Murphy leaps back to the ground, but quietly, so as not to wake Charlotte. He runs his finger along the blunt edge, and looks up, to where a scattering of stars—real or fake, he wonders?—populate the darkened sky.

‘Thank you,’ he whispers. To Bellamy, to the sponsors, to the sky.

Charlotte sighs in her sleep.

It occurs to Murphy that he could kill her. He could have killed her all along, of course, could have strangled her as soon as she had dropped off—but now, with the knife he had so longed for in his hands, he need only slip it carefully, quietly, between her ribs, straight into her heart. Painless. She’d be dead before she knew it. She’d be dead before she woke up.

He _should_ kill her.

But Murphy’s never been good at doing what he should. He slides the knife into his belt and slips Bellamy’s note into his pocket, where it rests next to his father's medal, a comforting weight pressing against his heart.

* * *

Murphy wakes an hour before he’s meant to. He knows that something’s wrong.

He sits up. ‘Charlotte.’

‘Yeah?’ she’s leaning against the trunk, twirling the knife expertly in her hands.

‘It’s too quiet,’ he says. He kicks his way out of the sleeping bag, and up onto his feet. ‘Birds have gone silent.’ He points up to the reddening sky, to the rising sun and the bloodstained clouds. ‘No morning chorus. Why?’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know.’

 **_BOOM!_ ** A cannon sounds. Someone’s dead. Someone’s dead, and they've died very, very close by.

Then, they hear movement. Heavy footsteps; panting. Murphy whips around to the source of the noise, resisting the urge to snatch the knife out of Charlotte’s hands. Her aim’s better than his, anyway. 

The boy comes hurtling out of the trees, eyes wild and charged with fear, before he comes to a sudden stop at the sight of them.

It’s the other John. John Mbege, from District 11. He’s got a mace in his hands, a backpack slung over his shoulder, a scrape down one cheek; he clearly braved the panthers for the supplies, and survived. Murphy stares at him, frozen, waiting for any sign of movement, waiting to see what he’ll do next. Mbege is tall and muscular and armed. They are smaller and skinnier and have only a knife between them. Mbege could lift his mace right now and bludgeon the two of them to death.

Mbege does no such thing.

‘Run,’ he says. ‘It’s coming.’

Then he takes off into the woods again, running as fast as his legs can carry him.

‘What’s coming?’ says Charlotte, fearful, tugging on Murphy’s sleeve like the twelve-year-old kid she is—but he’s no comfort, he’s no guide, he feels barely older than she is, here, now, half-maddened with terror. ‘Murphy?’

‘I don’t know—’ he stops mid-sentence. He sees it.

The thick yellow cloud rolls out of the trees. There’s an electric smell in the air, a smell that begins to sting the delicate membranes on the inside of Murphy’s nostrils, that claws its way cloyingly down his throat.

‘Gas,’ he says. ‘It’s gas.’

It’s coming towards them fast, deceptively silent, deceptively smooth, deceptively gradual, and unbidden, Murphy remembers his father. _Rushing wall of flame speeding through the dark._ Was he taken by surprise, or did he, like Murphy, see death coming? Did he see it, and know there was no escape?

They can’t outrun it—he doesn’t think Mbege will outrun it, even with his head-start. They can’t run. They can’t run.

They’re going to drown in it. They’re going to die. There’s no escape.

* * *

‘Well, what have you for me tonight?’ Murphy asked, settling himself down on the ground next to Bellamy. The breeze carried the smell of roses over to them from the garden. Bellamy’s face was lit up white by the glare of his tablet; he glanced over at Murphy, and Murphy saw that his eyes were squinted with a smile.

‘You’re gonna love this. Military history!’

‘Oh, goodie,’ said Murphy, the sarcasm dripping from his voice.

‘Do you want me to read to you or not, you ungrateful little jerk?’ There was no bite in Bellamy’s words, nothing harsh, not up here, where the night sky hung low and close enough to touch, as if it, too, wanted to hear Bellamy’s voice.

Bellamy read about the mustard gas they used in some great war, hundreds and hundreds of years ago now. How it burned men’s lungs. How they drowned in their own blood. But the gas, he told him, was heavier than the air. ‘It sunk, you see, into the trenches. And it was trench warfare, mostly, in that war. That was before the atom bombs. Men would dig trenches and shoot at one another over the top. When the mustard gas came, it would fill up the trenches like water in a bowl, and if the men had no gas-masks, they would drown.’

‘Lovely,’ said Murphy. ‘Really gets my mind off everything, Bellamy.’

‘The poisonous gasses sink in the mines at home, too,’ said Bellamy, thoughtfully.

‘Science. Wow. It’s just incredible,’ said Murphy. ‘Anyway, when I win these Games I won’t have to work a day in those mines. Lucky me!’

Bellamy laughed.

(Murphy hopes he can always remember the sound of that laugh. Even at the end of the world.)

Bellamy laughed, and then he switched to some other, happier year in history. Still they could smell the roses. Still the sky crouched low to listen.

* * *

‘Climb,’ says Murphy. ‘Pick a tree and climb, Charlotte. The gas is heavy, heavier than the air. We need to climb higher than the gas cloud can reach.’

She doesn’t need to be told twice; the two of them turn on their heels and scramble up the nearest trunk, hearts in their throats, tears being stung from their eyes. Murphy is sure it’s only adrenaline that keeps him going; they aren’t in the cloud yet, but in the corner of his eyes he sees the sickly-yellow tendrils that reach for him, curling their probing, poisonous fingers around him, burning his eyes and his mouth and his nose. He keeps going, keeps pushing himself higher and higher, his vision lengthening and narrowing until all he can see are the branches he’s going to reach for next, and the morning sky where it glows like a fire far above. He doesn’t know where Charlotte is, but he can’t worry about her now, not with his own survival hanging in the balance. All he can do is climb.

He’s coughing and spluttering like crazy by the time he reaches as high as he can go, as high as he trusts the branches will support his weight. Breath searing painfully in his throat, he clings like a monkey to the trunk and dares to look down.

A rolling yellow cloud passes only a metre or two beneath his boots, swallowing the forest in a sea of mustard. He hears another cough sound to his left, and cranes his head to see, tears streaming down from his burning eyes and dripping from his chin.

Charlotte is holding on for dear life in the tree next to his, her eyes red and squinting, her face pulled into a pained grimace.

‘Charlotte!’ he croaks. ‘Charlotte, are you okay?’

She turns and looks at him. An attempt at a smile, though it’s more of a wince. She raises a tiny fist, one thumb up.

He laughs, but it soon turns to a hacking cough, and she’s laughing and coughing too, wide-eyed, in the heady wash of both relief and disbelief. In that moment he feels very fond of her. It’s just the adrenaline of it all, he thinks. The both of them share in the strange and dizzy euphoria of survival as they wait for the yellow sea to part beneath their feet.

It could be beautiful, he thinks. Up here, above the yellow ocean, with only Charlotte and the scraggly green tops of the trees for company, looking at the sun rise. It feels unreal, like he’s stepped onto an alien planet; boiling yellow earth and blood-red sky.

It feels terrifying, too, this strange new world. He knows that he's a man a million miles from home. The boy from the Seam, the boy with hunched shoulders and coal dust in his nails, well. There's no room for him here. If Murphy wants to survive, he knows he will have to leave that boy behind.

* * *

They’re not laughing when they get back to the ground, and find that their water source has been poisoned. The water runs yellow as urine, and Murphy guesses that it’s absorbed the chemicals of the gas. At least they still have the canister they filled earlier between them—though in this heat, and with the remnants of the gas’ effects still tickling their chests and drying out their throats, he’s not optimistic for how long it'll last.

‘Well, we’d better move on,’ he says. 'Nothing keeping us here.’

They’re fairly aimless in choosing a path to take through the woods, other than the fact that both want to go in the _opposite_ direction to where the gas had come from. The birds have started to sing again, which reassures Murphy—until he finds that it isn't the only sound he can hear. It doesn't take them long to locate the source of the agonised, choking groans; groans so loud even the trees seem to hush at the sound of them.

It’s Mbege. He hadn’t outrun the gas after all. He lies on his back, blind eyes staring up at the morning sky. Blood and mucous stream from his nose and mouth; bubbling and gurgling, like his insides have been melted down to goo. He’s still alive. He’s still alive, and his pathetic, wretched little whimpers make Murphy want to retch. He’s so loud, too. He’ll draw every tribute from a mile away.

He’s too loud. That’s why Murphy does it.

‘Give me the knife, Charlotte,’ he whispers.

With a shaking hand, she hands him the knife by the handle. He is no expert in killing, but as he kneels next to Mbege’s body, he knows that there’s no way he could hurt Mbege now more than he’s already been hurt. He doesn’t even think the tall, kind-eyed boy from District 11 can hear him. He doesn’t think he knows that they’re there.

His mind carries him back to before, when he had mocked this other John on Caesar Flickerman’s stage. Killing him now feels a meagre apology, but it’s all he can do. He sucks in a breath through his teeth, and with a smooth, sure, decisive movement, slits open John Mbege’s throat. Blood spurts out, and Murphy only narrowly misses the spray.

Mbege is dead very quickly, after that. Even though they know it’s coming, the **_BOOM_ **of the cannon takes them both by surprise.

Then there’s a rustling in the trees.

Murphy looks up, still a little dazed, a little lost, Mbege's blood sticky on his hands. He barely feels the knife as it is snatched away; Charlotte has thrown it before he even understands what the noise is, before he realises that they've got company.

Fox from District 9 stares down at the handle of the blade where it emerges from her chest. She falls to her knees with a wet gurgle, then forward onto her face, the knife that Charlotte threw with killer accuracy buried deep in her heart.

**_BOOM._ **

The boy from District 9 is with her. He lets out an outraged roar, and hurls himself forward—the knife is still in Fox’s heart—they’re unarmed—he’s going to kill them—

No. They’re not unarmed.

And he isn't going to kill them.

Murphy grabs Mbege’s mace from where it lies next to his body, and swings it, hard, against the boy from District 9’s head. It hits its mark with a disgusting walloping crunch, and Murphy throws himself forward with a cry, tackling the boy even as he falls. He feels like something possessed, as he raises the mace to smash it down on the boy’s head again, and again, and again, pinning him flat to the ground.

In his frenzy, he doesn’t hear the **_BOOM_ ** of the cannon signalling the boy’s heart has stopped. He just hears the wet sound of the mace where it hits flesh and bone, just feels the hot spray of the other boy’s blood on his face. He has to kill him. He has to kill this boy before he has the chance to return the favour. He has to kill or be killed.

‘MURPHY!’ Charlotte screams. ‘Murphy, he’s _dead!'_

She’s retrieved the knife, and holds it in red-stained hands. He drops the mace.

‘He’s dead,’ says Charlotte, again. ‘Murphy, he’s dead.’

He wonders how many times she had to say it. How long it took to get through to him. He scrambles back, off the dead boy’s corpse, and rubs a hand over his nose; it comes away red.

He doesn’t know what possessed him. He feels nothing but the rapid-fire pulse of his heart, beating like a mantra: _you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive._

The three kids who lie now amongst the tree trunks, however, are not. No time for guilt and no time for regret; there’s no time, even, to examine why he lost his mind, to question what possessed him as he bludgeoned that boy's skull in. Somebody else is sure to have heard the cannon-booms. They have to go.

Murphy and Charlotte raid the three backpacks for supplies. There’s enough water for two or three days, and enough food for four. There’s a mace. There’s a knife. The two of them are in a much better position than they were; including them, there are only eight players left in the Games. Murphy should be happy. It’s a considerable improvement in their fortunes. Instead, he just feels grim, as he and Charlotte leave the clearing with the three dead kids behind.

He uses some of their precious water to clean the blood from his face, but he thinks some of it lingers, around his ears and his hairline. He thinks he won’t ever get the stain of it out.

No matter. The Murphy who cared about bloodstains is far behind him, now, back in the dirty gutter of District 12, alone and afraid and listening to grief as it echoes down the street.

* * *

They spend the guts of the next week avoiding the Career tributes. After all the bloodshed of the first few days, he knows the audience will be getting bored; a few near-misses as he and Charlotte hide in the trees, or down in a cave, while the Career tributes pace the woods only metres away, can’t keep the Gamemakers, or the audience, sated forever. Their provisions won’t last, either; after another few days wandering the woods, constantly on the lookout for danger, Murphy knows something has to give. They find no more rivers, no more wells or brooks, and though Bellamy secures another two litres of water as a gift from a sponsor, it won’t last, and they won’t see another. Food is one thing, because they can always trap or kill more, but Murphy knows for sure now that the lake, and the filled canisters at the cornucopia, are the only other water sources in the arena. They looped around the central plain after the first day, to find that the one path to the lake, a narrow valley in between two cliffs of rock, is boobey-trapped with landmines, clearly signposted. Not even the Careers have attempted to cross it, not before they must, not while they still have enough water to last.

The way Murphy sees it, they have two options: try and cross the minefield, and probably both die; or try and sneak into the Career camp, and only one of them will probably die.

‘I’ll go,’ he says. ‘I can go at night, when they’re asleep.’

‘No,’ Charlotte argues, ‘I’m smaller than you are. I can hide easier.’

‘Charlotte,’ he says, ‘you got a _twelve_ in training. The Careers are _looking_ for you. I doubt they even remember I exist.’

She shakes her head, but his mind is made up. The only concession he makes for his own safety is taking the knife over the mace; he isn’t sure if she’s happy to part with it, but Murphy knows that, if needs be, Bellamy can get her another. More than half the field is dead and they’re only a few days in. Betting must be on fire in the Capitol. Sponsors will be lining up for the tiny little girl who got a twelve, he’s sure of it.

He doubts very highly he’s half as popular. He’s never been liked, never been likeable, not even at home in District 12. But there are only eight of them left; the five Career tributes plus that kid Finn from District 7, then Charlotte and Murphy. If he isn’t popular with audiences now, then he’ll just have to outlive the ones who are.

Murphy has scouted out the Career camp; they generally hunt for Charlotte during the day, with one or two people left behind to guard the camp, then return at night to sleep. He’s more stealth than strength, anyway, and taking on a well-fed Career tribute during the day appeals very little to him. He’ll take his chances under cover of night.

‘Good luck, Murphy,’ Charlotte says to him before he goes. Then, to his endless surprise, she rushes forward and hugs him around the middle.

Huh. He pats her on her blonde head and doesn't have to fake his look of fond bemusement. He hopes the audience gets a kick out of that one.

But, as he turns away, he registers the queasiness in his belly as something else: dread. He doubts he would have survived this long without Charlotte, nor would she have survived without him. He would like for her to win, if he can’t. He would like for her to survive.

He waits until after dusk before approaching the Careers camp. He sees a shadow atop a pillar; someone's on watch, but he can't quite discern who—he sees the head nod, once, twice, as if they're struggling not to fall asleep. Idiot, whoever it is. They aren't paying attention. All he has to do is stay close to the ground. He’ll be fine. 

His own reassurances sound hollow to his ears.

He crawls. It feels like it takes a painstakingly long time, but he doesn't care, because he knows the shadow on the pillar with the lolling head hasn't seen him. Adrenaline sharpens his vision to a tunnel, a tunnel that only opens out as soon as he draws close to the cornucopia, to where the sleeping bodies of the Careers lie scattered around the base of the lookout-pillar.

He lets out a long breath. Inside the cornucopia are canisters upon canisters of water; a low pile of plastic-wrapped nutrient bars and other foods; more maces and shields arranged in a line; and a row of gas masks, the sort they use in the deep mines of District 12.

Gas masks!

Then he’s staggering back; his back slams against the cornucopia's hard metal wall. 

There’s a hard blow and a searing pain in his right side, shocking all the breath out of him. He can't help the cry that claws loose from his throat; he feels the wet hot blood well up and soak down his side. He realises he’s been hit with one of the jagged maces, but slowly, as if there's a delay between his body and his brain. His entire flank feels like it’s about to fall off. He can hardly see. He can hardly breathe.

‘Don’t, Roan,’ he hears a voice say, barely audible through his own hiss of agony.

Then Ontari’s hands are at his throat, digging in, cutting off his breath. Her white teeth glint in the dark. ‘Well, well, well,’ she says, like some sort of movie villain. Always, always, playing to the audience. ‘Look what we have here.’

He shoves her away, and reaches trembling fingers down to his bleeding side. She raises her arms, placating, mocking. The shadows of the other Career tributes draw closer, and Roan hulks over him, the mace in his hand red and glistening. 

He’s surrounded. He draws in a breath, ignores the awful searing pain in his side, glances around. He could try to make a run for it, but he knows he wouldn't make it. He can't fight, he can't run—he’ll just have to bluff.

‘Guess I just missed your pretty face too much, Ontari.’ He's going for wry sarcasm, but his voice is hoarse with pain and he’s certain that it dampens the effect.

‘Oh, I’m sure,’ she says, cocking her head to one side, looking him up and down like he’s a mouse and she’s a snake, sizing up whether or not she could swallow him whole.

‘Should we kill him?’ asks Roan.

Murphy’s heart hammers a beat in his ears. ‘Why would you do that,’ he says, feeling sick, feeling terrible, feeling like nothing more than dirt, ‘when I’m the only person who knows where Charlotte is?’

Ontari goes very still.

‘You've been looking for her,’ he says, and he knows as he glances around each of the Career tributes that, in truth, he’s speaking to Ontari alone. ‘That tiny little girl who got a twelve. You _know_ that she’s your biggest competition. And you won't find her. Not without me.’

Ontari’s nostrils flare. He can almost see the gears turn behind her eyes. ‘Search him,’ she orders. Finn comes forward and pats him down, avoiding his bloody side. Murphy doesn't react when Finn finds the knife, and takes it. He just stares, stony, at Ontari, and at the cameras that he knows are tracking his every twitch.

He might be done for, but he still has a show to put on.

Then, Ontari folds her arms over her chest. ‘Clean yourself up,’ she says, harsh. 'There's a first-aid kit by the gas masks. Tomorrow, you’re going to find Charlotte, and bring her to me, or you’re going to die. Your choice, John Murphy.’

The shadows retreat. Roan nods toward the first-aid kit, and Murphy all but crawls to it, unwrapping a roll of gauze and a tube of antiseptic cream with bloodied, trembling fingers. He doesn't think about the morning, doesn't think about Charlotte.

 _Survive_ , he tells himself.

Anything at all to survive.

* * *

Finn keeps his knife. Murphy doesn’t object. He senses it’s a choice between having his knife or keeping his head, and Murphy will make the survivor’s move every time. He wishes he hadn’t chosen to take it; John-from-District-11’s mace is hardly much use to Charlotte now, in the woods, even if she has enough food to last for another day at least. She’s the knife-thrower here, not him, and now they’re both all but defenceless.

That doesn’t stop Murphy sitting himself down by the remains of the shields, the ones the panthers shredded at the bloodbath. He thinks about how stupid it was that the Gamemakers gave them such useless shields to begin with. Maybe they hadn't known that the panthers’ claws could slice through the metal like butter; he’s sure some Gamemaker will be in trouble for that. He’s not complaining, though. He may have no knife; but he does have a wealth of scraps of metal. And Murphy is nothing if not resourceful.

Monroe takes first watch. She doesn't nod off this time, clearly having learned her lesson from earlier. She sits up straight atop the pillar, making sure nobody else gets as close to their camp as Murphy did—he also suspects she’s ready to alert the others if he tries to make any foolhardy escape attempts. As if he would even entertain the idea, what with Roan dozing only a few metres away, mace in hand.

The wound in his side has dulled down to an insistent, throbbing pain. He did the best he could with the antiseptic cream and the bandage, but he worries that he might need stitches. He’s dreading seeing it in the morning light if it looks as bad as it feels. But he can't worry about that now; he’s got a more pressing task at hand.

He waits until Monroe looks away. Nobody notices him slip off one of his boots in the dark. Quietly, carefully, terrified to wake the others, he lifts a long, jagged piece of the shredded metal. Monroe looks over; he sees her eyes gleam against the firelight. Murphy turns away and feigns sleep. He waits ten seconds. She looks away. Then he takes the heel of his boot, and slowly, painstakingly, begins to bend the wider end of the sliver of metal into a right angle.

It takes him all night to quietly hammer the metal into the right shape, bending it all the way around in some approximation of a handle, stopping and starting and hiding every time one of the others stir. He slices his fingers more than once. But by the time the sun rises, he’s got a rough, make-shift knife. It isn’t perfect, but it’s heavy enough to throw and devilishly sharp. Sharp enough to cut.

He hides it in his belt, underneath his jacket, and puts his boot back on. He tries to feign sleep again, then, but he’s so exhausted he sinks into a real doze within minutes.

* * *

‘You,’ says Ontari, kicking him in the thigh where he sits by the pillar, jerking him awake and alert, ‘are going with them.’ She points over her shoulder to where Trina and Pascal stand, maces in hand, looking grim.

‘Do I get a mace?’ he smirks. He rises to his feet, and ignores the sticky, pulling pain in his side.

‘No,’ says Ontari shortly. ‘Bring back that little girl, alive. I want to kill her myself.’

Murphy doesn’t get a single weapon from the cornucopia. Ontari won’t allow it. He does, however, get a gas mask—but only because none of the Careers have realised what they are, or why they might need them. It doesn’t take him very long to formulate a plan.

* * *

All he needed to do to trip the gas was to lead Trina and Pascal to that part of the woods.

And all he needs to do now is fasten his mask, take a few steps back, and watch them drown. He leans against the trunk of a tree, crosses his arms over his chest, and plays at nonchalance. They both go down with a horrible gurgle, terrible hacking breaths, choking on their own lungs. 

‘And so, eight becomes six,’ he says through the filter of the mask. He hopes they like that in the Capitol. He would wink, but they won’t see it through the mask. He would wink, but he doesn’t know if he could stomach it.

He knows Ontari will hear the twin **_BOOMS_ ** back at camp. He wonders if she’ll come after him. He wonders what he ought to do. He makes his way out of the cloud of gas, out of the thick yellow sea, and he doesn’t once look behind him at the two bodies that lie crumpled and prone on the forest floor. He leaves their backpacks, too, in the hope that Charlotte will find them. He doesn't look back. He mustn't. He's not the sort of man who looks back, not anymore.

They died holding hands.

* * *

It isn’t until he’s almost clear of the gas that the wound in his side begins to sting sharper than ever before; the chemicals permeating through the gauze bandage. He grits his teeth and keeps going. He can’t afford to feel pain, not now. He can’t afford to feel anything.

* * *

‘What did you do?’ Roan demands, emerging from the trees with his mace in his hands.

So. Ontari hasn’t come herself, after all.

Murphy shrugs, Pascal's mace in his hand and gas mask swinging around his neck. He still has the knife in his belt, the knife he made, but he doesn’t think he’ll have to use it. He doesn’t think that Roan is here to kill him. ‘Gas,’ he says, as if that explains it all. ‘Couldn’t find Charlotte, so I guess we’ll have to look again tomorrow, hm?’

A shadow in the branches, overhead.

He senses it.

His heartbeat ratchets up to a hundred miles a minute; he prays Roan can’t tell. He prays Roan doesn’t see her. He unwittingly did exactly what he was meant to do; he unwittingly led Roan straight to her.

‘What are you doing here, Murphy?’ Roan demands. ‘Whose side are you on—ours, or Charlotte’s?’

Murphy laughs, and he takes his knife from his belt.

Roan tenses, ready to run, or ready to lift his mace to finish what he started the night before, but Murphy just turns and hurls the makeshift knife at the tree next to Roan. It lodges itself firmly in the bark, the curved handle glinting in the fading light. Roan takes a long, measured look at the knife, and then turns back to Murphy.

‘I’m not on anybody’s side, not anymore,’ says Murphy. He isn’t just speaking to Roan, now, either. ‘I’m just trying to survive.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ asks Roan.

‘Aren’t we all,’ Murphy echoes. ‘Will I be gutted, then, if I return to camp empty-handed?’

‘No promises,’ says Roan, darkly.

‘Guess I’ll just have to take my chances, then,’ says Murphy, and gestures for Roan to lead the way.

He leaves the knife in the tree. A parting gift, to make up for the knife he lost, to make up for the fact that, next time he meets Charlotte, he knows that he’ll have to kill her.

* * *

The wound in his side gets steadily worse over the next few days, and no amount of antiseptic cream can soothe it. He can hardly bear to look at it, oozing yellow pus, strange new red bruises mottling the skin around it. He changes the bandages religiously, and hides it from the others as best he can; if Ontari catches wind that he’s sick, he suspects she’ll just kill him there and then. His place in camp is already shaky, contingent on his increasingly transparent promises that he can find Charlotte, and the inexplicable fact that Ontari seems to like him. She likes him enough to disregard the circumstances of Trina and Pascal’s deaths, anyway.

Finn and Monroe do not. They think he killed them.

He did, of course, kill them, but as far as he’s concerned, he did them all a favour. There are two less mouths to feed on their dwindling provisions, and there are two less players to battle out to the end.

* * *

Then Ontari corners him by the cornucopia one evening, hemming him in, under its shadow. The others have gone to scout around the rocky plain. It’s just the two of them.

‘Hey,’ Murphy says warily, before turning to continue taking inventory. Water and food’s running low. They’ll have to make for the lake soon, he knows.

Then, a hand running down his neck; light scrape of a fingernail. It barely touches him, but he imagines it leaves a red hot scratch the length of him, raw and bleeding. He closes his eyes, and lets out a breath. He doesn’t know what she wants. (He knows what she wants). He turns his head in a silent question. (He doesn’t really have to ask).

He’s seen the way she looks at him, sometimes. Like she’ll eat him whole.

‘It is television,’ she says. He supposes he ought to find her low croon of a voice sexy, but it just turns his stomach. She takes a step closer, and her hot breath burns against the back of his neck. ‘What do you bet we’re on everybody’s screens right now, Murphy? Why don't we put on a show?’

Murphy grins at nothing, and he looks at his shoes. Cracking brown leather. Sand and dust on his laces. He can't help but hunch his shoulders a little, can't help but crane away from the heat of her breath. Unbidden, Bellamy rises to the forefront of his mind; the way he reads, one knee drawn close to his chest, leaning forward, as he can just dive into the white spaces between the words. As if the act consumes him. Murphy wonders what it would feel like to lose himself so completely in something, to become so engrossed that he forgets his own name.

‘I don't know, Ontari,’ Murphy drawls, hollow and fake. Can the cameras tell? Can they see the cracks in his skin, glimpse the rotting, trembling core within? ‘This is a family show. What about the kids?’

She cackles a laugh. He forces a shiver back down.

Just then, they hear footsteps at the mouth of the cornucopia—they both tense in unison, but it’s just Finn, oblivious to what he has interrupted. Murphy’s never been happier to see him or his perfect flowing hair. Ontari moves away, and he hopes no one notices how his shoulders slump in relief. He can breathe again.

He volunteers for the next shift scouring the woods for Charlotte. They find no one, as usual. He doesn’t know what he’d do if they did.

Ontari doesn’t try to touch him again.

But he’s always tense. He’s always waiting for it. He sleeps in fits and starts when he’s not the one on watch, and he forgets how it feels to dream.

* * *

If Murphy’s analytical about the whole thing, he figures that the two biggest players right now are Ontari and Roan; Ontari for her cunning and savagery, and Roan for brute strength. Despite being the heart of their alliance, the two seem to barely tolerate one another.

This is why it doesn’t come as so much of a surprise when, one morning, after a quiet few days of searching in vain in the woods for Charlotte, Ontari struts up behind Roan by the Cornucopia, Murphy’s old knife in hand, and slits his throat open.

The **_BOOM_ ** of the cannon is the most surprising thing, Murphy thinks, and only because it’s so loud. It reverberates through his chest, like the beat of a drum. Roan falls unceremoniously to the ground; blood still spurting from his neck. Murphy looks at where it has painted the golden surface of the Cornucopia in a splatter of scarlet. He doesn’t really have any thoughts about Roan, or his death, or the possibility—well, _probability_ —that Ontari will so suddenly turn on him, too.

‘What the fuck?’ Finn demands. ‘What did you do that for, Ontari?’

Monroe and Murphy just share a look.

Ontari stares disdainfully down at Roan’s cooling corpse, and shrugs. 'Don't know,’ she says, lightly, and Murphy knows she means every word. She doesn't know. She doesn't care. ‘I guess he just was pissing me off.’

Finn stares at her in shock. Murphy wants to laugh. He doesn't know if anything could still shock him now. There’s a hard shell that’s grown up over his skin, and it won't let any shock or horror in. All he feels now is apathy, and fear.

He finds that, despite himself, despite it all, he can't remember the smell of home, nor the sound of wind chimes. It doesn't matter. They’re worth nothing to him now.

* * *

Aside from the fact there’s one less player, it’s also a good thing that Roan’s dead because they’re nearly all out of water. There has been exactly no rain since they arrived in the arena, and Murphy knows it’s to drive them east, over the minefield, to where the blue of the lake glitters like a mirage in the relentless, shimmering heat. He wonders how Charlotte’s been coping, since the brook in the woods has been poisoned. Maybe she found Trina and Pascal’s water canisters where he left them for her. All he knows of Charlotte right now is that she isn't dead. No flickering image of her face has lit up the sky. Not yet.

He really doesn't know whether he’s relieved or not. Every night his entire body seems to fizz with sick suspense as the anthem plays and the projections of the dead begin, waiting to see if she’s dead. He should be happy to see that she’s gone. He should be happy to see her brown eyes stare down at him from above, immortalised in her headshot, young and innocent. But in truth, he dreads it.

Doesn’t matter, though. Charlotte isn’t dead, and neither is he, but he doesn't dare to take a breath, not even to count all the people who are left. He doesn't dare get complacent. He doesn't dare to hope.

There are five of them. That's all.

Charlotte, in the woods somewhere. Himself, Ontari, Finn, Monroe. That’s all. Their alliance is cracking under the pressure; he can sense it. He stops sleeping at all.

They run out of water shortly after that. They have no choice but to cross the minefield that lies between them and the lake.

‘Who’s going first?’ Ontari asks, grinning her shark grin. It’s clear it won't be her.

Murphy raises an eyebrow at Finn and Monroe. It won't be him, either.

He doesn't know when the dynamics shifted in their little alliance. Maybe when Ontari ran her hand down his neck, or when Finn was so stupidly, naïvely shocked at her brutal killing of Roan. Murphy doesn't think it matters. The shell of himself that he wears for protection, for strength, for numbing his heart to the horror of it all—that boy is vicious and sharp. He won't go first onto the field of mines.

Monroe moves quickly, unsheathing the sword she received from her sponsors with a quick motion, pointing it straight at Finn’s throat. Her hand trembles, a little, but her face is flat. ‘Go,’ she says.

Finn leads the way out into the minefield, under the burning sun, and Murphy doesn't question the savagery of it. He doesn't question a thing. He wonders, idly, as they step out onto the sand, whether or not he should. Whether maybe he’s lost something essential here, in the Games, something that he won't ever get back.

Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. It won't help him survive.

They make it more than halfway across the minefield before the explosion. Maybe it’s just basic probability, or maybe it’s some strange inversion of déja vu; but he almost _knows,_ before it happens. He sees Finn take a step. He knows.

He sees the flash before he hears the boom, like how lightning always comes before thunder. Hot spray against his cheek, a blinding pain in the ear that was closest to the blast.

When the dust clears, the piece of Finn that is closest to Murphy is still alive. He has no legs below the hips; they lie a short way away, gnarled and ragged flesh, blood soaking into sand. Murphy crawls to Finn’s head and torso, his white face, his wide, wide eyes. Bloody mouth. Gasping breaths.

‘Finn,’ Murphy says, and on some impulse he cannot name, he grabs his ruined hand. Some fingers are gone. His hand is wet and slippery and Murphy cannot tell if Finn knows that he’s squeezing it.

Finn’s eyes meet his. Murphy is suddenly caught, frozen in that gaze. Finn looks like he’s pleading for something. For life, maybe. For another chance. For his wretched, horrible, mangled little death to mean something, maybe. Or maybe Finn just doesn't want to die alone. Finn wants to know that somebody is there, with him, at the end. Murphy, for all his flaws, understands. Murphy, too, doesn't want to die alone. So, he doesn’t look away, not until whatever it is behind Finn’s gaze suddenly and absolutely cuts out. One minute he’s there, and the next he is not.

**_BOOM._ **

‘Poor Finn. Last thing he ever sees and it’s my ugly mug,’ says Murphy, with a dry laugh. In truth, he feels strange and unsettled and—sad. He feels sad over the death of Finn Collins from District 7. And he can’t afford that, because then he’ll start feeling sad over John Mbege, and Fox, and Trina and Pascal, and the kid from District 10 who was killed by the panther and—and—and—

And he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop.

Monroe is covered in Finn's blood. She doesn’t seem to find him very funny. 

He lets go of Finn’s hand, and reaches for the tattered remains of his belt. The force of the explosion has bent his knife, the knife Bellamy sent him, the knife Finn took from him. It's beyond use. He sighs, heavily, dramatically, and stands up straight, as if he only held Finn’s hand for the knife, as if he’s really the monster he pretends to be.

 _Fake it ‘til you make it,_ he remembers Clarke saying.

He’s frightened he might have made it.

* * *

They make it to the lake. They make it to the water. Murphy’s glad, because the sun is hot, and his ears are hot, and when he lifts his bloodstained t-shirt he sees he has red streaks running up his chest from his infected wound. He knows it’s blood poisoning, and he knows he’s running out of time.

Then Monroe disturbs a nest of snakes, jade-green and writhing on the ground, and each of them is bitten.

Things get hazy after that.

For one thing, Bellamy is there.

His throat is very, very dry, and he has no idea where he is. Not by the lake. He’s up on the cliff, the cliff over the minefield. What is Bellamy doing here? He should be at home in District 12, where Murphy will glimpse him on market-days, tall and clean and handsome, and feel a strange and fearful stir in his chest at the sight.

‘Bellamy?’ he mumbles.

Bellamy is wearing a suit. It’s so dusty here. He’s going to ruin his suit. He looks so handsome, but he’s going to ruin his suit.

‘Get up,’ Bellamy yells. ‘Survive!’

‘AAAAAAAAGH!’ Big yell. Not him. Not Bellamy.

Monroe is running at him with her big sword. _Not good,_ he thinks, and he rolls over; she trips over a rock and falls. He thinks there might be something wrong with her. He hears her lovely sword fall with a clatter against the stone. It’s so shiny in the sunlight. Everything is shiny now. Everything is shiny and new. He reaches for the sword.

‘Murphy,’ says Bellamy. ‘Murphy, please. You promised me you’d survive.’

‘Actually, Bellamy, I don’t recall doing any such thing,’ says Murphy, but all his words get mixed up in his mouth. Then he sees Monroe is running for her sword.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ he says, and he snatches it out of her reach. She lets out a wild cry, and then she’s coming for him, coming for the sword he holds in a twitchy hand.

 _Survive_.

Did he promise Bellamy he’d survive? He may have. He must have. Sounds like something he’d do, if Bellamy had asked it of him. He thinks, sometimes, that if Bellamy asked him to go to the ends of the earth, he would go ten steps farther.

He stabs Monroe in the neck with her own sword. Killing her is easy, because he has to do it. He made Bellamy a promise he would do it.

Bellamy blinks away out of sight, nothing more than a mirage of the desert plains, and the **_BOOM_ ** that signals Monroe’s heart has stopped jerks Murphy back to his senses. The world is still shivering, the sky is still twitching, but now he can grasp why. His head aches. He has a snakebite on his ankle, and an infection in his blood. And then he sees Ontari come up over the sandstone crest of the hill, her eyes wild and her teeth bared, shimmering like a ghost in the heat. 

He scrambles to his feet. He still has Monroe’s sword in his hands, but Ontari has a mace, and Ontari is vicious, and Ontari seems to have recovered from the venom much faster than he has.

‘So, it comes down to the three of us,’ she says. ‘Who would have thought, huh? I mean, the girl who scored a twelve, maybe. But _you_?’ She looks him up and down, disdainful. ‘I think it’s time to get you out of the way so the real finale can begin.’

She runs for him. He dodges the first swing of the mace, and tries to catch her with the blade of Monroe’s sword; but in truth he knows how she fights, with both aggression and finesse. He knows, in his heart of hearts, as she easily deflects his strike and knocks the sword from his hands, that he’s done for.

She lets out a sudden gasp. The mace falls from her hands.

A jagged, make-shift blade is embedded in her thigh. Not a fatal wound, no, but enough to stop her in her tracks, enough to surprise her, enough to prevent her from killing him there and then. She shoves him to the ground where he gasps and wheezes and hardly sees the blur that launches herself at Ontari from a nearby boulder.

Charlotte. She knocks Ontari to the ground, tears the knife out from her thigh, but Ontari is faster and stronger and she rolls out from underneath Charlotte to twist her down and pin her to the ground. With what feels like it must be his final burst of energy, Murphy lifts himself up and throws himself toward Ontari, and barrels into her.

He knocks her aside, feels the thump as his body collides with her’s, as he slams her to the ground. Her dark head knocks hard against the stone, and then his does. Blunt pain wraps around the back of his skull, pain like a toothache in his brain. The two of them lie there, dazed, for a shivery, fractured moment, ears ringing with tuneless sound.

The sky in the arena is so blue, Murphy thinks, blue on top of blue on top of blue. He could fall right into it.

He remembers Bellamy’s words: _‘Survive.’_

Murphy wheezes his way back up. 

He knows the venom is still in his system, knows that his blood is poisoned, that he's just hit his head, that there aren’t really three cliffs and three Charlottes. The hand that braces itself against the ground is not really an octopus of fingers. His heart has taken up residence in his throat, boom of thunder in his ears, and if he opens his mouth he thinks hot, black tar will come pouring out.

On the edge of the scrubby cliff, Charlotte rises to her feet. Ontari’s dark hair is like a black cloud smeared against the sandstone; her lips are red and bubbling. Charlotte is trembling. Murphy screws his eyes shut and then opens them again. All of the images swimming in front of his eyes coalesce into one. Charlotte’s hands are red. She’s got the knife—the knife she took from the tree—the knife he made for her—the knife she just used on Ontari—in her hand.

 **_BOOM!_** goes the cannon, and for a moment he thinks it’s him that’s dead.

No. His heart is still somewhere in his skull, pumping like a drum. He is somehow still here.

He’s still here.

He stands. Ontari is dead, and he feels no relief. It’s just him and Charlotte left; just the tributes of District 12. It’s just him and Charlotte, and the fever that gnaws on his brain, and the sun in his eyes, and the sky that doesn’t care, and the knife in her hand, the knife that she lifts to throw at him.

He doesn’t move. Even if he did, he knows Charlotte, knows that they’re at the edge of the arena, that there’s nowhere to hide, but even if there was, it’s Charlotte—

And she never misses.

‘I’m sorry, Murphy,’ she says. She’s crying. She looks so young, standing there with bloodstained hands. ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to hurt you. But I have to. It’ll never end. It’ll never end. I want to go home. I'm sorry. I just want to go home.’

She lifts the knife, and she throws it.

A hard knock of pain where his heart is. He barely feels it. But—

A metallic clatter against the stone. Twitchy with fever, he looks down. The knife he made lies by his left boot. He lifts his hand to his chest, to his heart, where the point of the blade hit its mark—and bounced back.

Inside his jacket, he feels something hard and round. He reaches inside the breast-pocket, and he lifts it out.

His father’s medal gleams golden in the glare of the sun, and with it, Bellamy's note.

**SURVIVE. B**

_Shut up_ , Murphy thinks. _I'm trying_ , Murphy thinks. _I will_ , Murphy thinks.

Charlotte’s big brown eyes look between the medal in his hands and the knife by his feet. He wonders if she’ll run for it. He wonders what she’ll do; he’s bigger than her. He’s stronger than her. But he’s sick—he understands this, now, understands that he’s dying, red lines streaking up his chest and down his hips. He’s still got the snake venom breaking apart the edges of his vision. She stands a chance.

He crouches to pick up the knife. She stands a chance, but he—sick and dying and half-mad—he stands a chance, too. He can throw a knife, too.

Just as it had at the very beginning of the Games, back when he stood on his podium staring at the cornucopia, time slows. The world shrinks to crystalline clarity, his fever clearing for just one perfect moment.

He lifts the knife. He takes aim.

Charlotte’s big brown eyes meet his own. She keeps looking into his eyes, even as he throws the knife, even as he misjudges the weight and the distance and the knife embeds itself in her belly instead of her chest and she stumbles back a step.

He falls forward, the red planes of rock rushing up to meet him, his hands scraping hard against the stone. He’s so sick. His head is splitting in two. And he missed. He missed. A searing in his throat, and he vomits; his own red blood splatters against the red stone, against his hands. Colours bleed together. It’s all he can do not to collapse, not to fall into it. It’s all going red. He spits out one last glob of blood. He lifts his head and looks death in the eye.

Charlotte frowns down at the knife in her belly. It won’t kill her, at least not yet. At least not quickly. And all she has to do is finish him off. Then she’s won, and the Capitol doctors will swoop in and take care of her.

‘I’m sorry, Charlotte,’ he croaks. ‘I’m sorry, too.’

He crawls forward, crawls toward her on his hands and knees, bloody mouth, bleary eyes, hot ears. There’s nothing triumphant about this. They’re just two kids, _children_ _,_ here at the end of the world.

‘Murphy,’ she says.

‘I’m sorry, too,’ he says again, and she’s reaching for the knife in her own stomach, reaching to pull it out, reaching out to finish him.

With his final burst of strength, he surges forward. He collides with her just as she yanks out the knife, and he feels the splitting sting of it somewhere in his shoulder, somewhere dangerously close to his neck, but it doesn't matter, because he’s knocked her back, one step, two, and she’s toppling back over the cliff, she—

She’s got both hands on his arm; it's all that keeps her suspended over the drop, short little legs kicking wildly, toes scrabbling for purchase on the sheer cliff-face and finding none. His chest is pressed to the cliff edge. And it’s not huge, the fall, but it's enough to kill her. It’s enough to kill a malnourished, weak, injured little girl, a girl so light that even if all of her weight is hanging off his arm, he barely feels the tug of gravity. She clings to him, and with his other hand he holds _her_ hands steady—small as a baby bird—and he _should_ pry her hands free instead, he _should_ shake her off, he _should—_

He can't. Brown eyes stare into his own.

‘Charlotte,’ he says, and then stops. Because what is there to say? She’s a killer. So is he. But he can’t kill her. He can’t do it.

Here they are, at the end of the world, and he can’t bring himself to let her fall.

‘Tell my dad,’ she whispers. ‘Tell my dad I’m sorry. Tell them all that I’m sorry.’

‘Charlotte?’ he says, and in his fever, his sickness, the blood that oozes from the knife in his shoulder, he doesn’t realise what she’s going to do. Not until it’s too late.

She lets go of his arm, wrenches her hands out of his faltering grip. Then she’s falling.

She hits the stone with a crunch he won't ever forget. Then she lies still. Her limbs are outstretched like a starfish. A red poppy blooms on her shirt where he stabbed her. There’s more blood spreading out from behind her blonde head like a red halo. Red sun. He thinks her brown eyes might still be looking at him, might still be gazing into his, like she can still see all the tatters that remain of him.

 **_BOOM!_** goes the cannon.

He rolls back from the cliff edge and sits up, suppressing the urge to vomit again. His vision is darkening around the edges and his heart feels strangely irregular, like it’s stopping and starting in his chest. He wonders if it’s about to stop for good. He doesn’t think he’d mind. He never expected to survive the Games, anyway. 

‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ The volume of the announcer’s voice rattles him to the bone; he jumps, and he wonders if the audience will laugh at that. ‘I am pleased to present the victor of the Seventy-First Hunger Games: John Murphy!’

That’s his name. Did he forget?

‘I give you — the tribute of District 12!’

He curls his knees close to his chest, and knows with what remains of his lucidity, that he's being broadcast into every home in the country. He should be triumphant. He should be standing, proud and whole. He can’t stand, and he isn't proud or whole. Instead he’s curled into himself on the edge of a cliff, trembling like a leaf, covered in blood, knife stuck in his shoulder. He can barely comprehend what’s happening to him; it all feels very distant, like it’s happening to someone else entirely. He still sees Charlotte’s blank stare. Smashed-open head. He still feels nothing but dread.

The Games aren’t ending with a bang, but with a whimper. They won’t like that.

A shadow passes over the sun. He sees a figure in white climb to the bottom of the hovercraft ladder. Vision’s blinking out. Might be a ghost. He isn't sure.

Hands, helping him to his feet. He stumbles over to the ladder. ‘—Well done, John, that’s it—’

Oh. That’s his name. Didn’t he just think that? Did he forget? He looks at his hands where they cling to the ladder. Cracked skin on his knuckles. Ugly. The assistant is holding him fast, which is good, because if he wasn’t Murphy knows he would have let go. Fallen back. Head smashed open like a watermelon on the rocks.

He collapses the moment he is inside the hovercraft, but there are hands there to catch him and there is a stretcher underneath his back. They are cutting off his clothes, they are putting a mask over his face, they are sticking a needle in his arm and then the darkness swallows him whole. He’s never been happier to slip away.

* * *

Yelling. He hears yelling. Far away. Getting closer. He should get up. He should wake up. Anyone could kill him now, here, asleep! He’s an idiot—he’ll _die_. Why can’t he wake up? He _needs to wake up_ —

* * *

He’s naked. He’s in a bed. It’s warm and soft—the softest bed he’s ever felt. He wants to stay awake, but his eyelids are too heavy for him to lift and there’s a band around his waist holding him fast to the bed and he can’t cling to consciousness no matter how hard he tries.

* * *

He doesn’t dream. He’ll be thankful for that, later.

* * *

When next he wakes up, he wakes up for real. There’s no needles in his arms, and no restraints tying him to the bed. His head feels fresh and clear, like it's been rinsed out. 

He feels _awake_.

And he remembers:

He won.

At that he feels nothing at all.

There’s an outfit folded at the foot of the bed. It’s the same one he wore in the arena; but clean and new. He looks clean and new, too. He looks down at his naked body, and though he's thinner than he’s been in years, almost as thin he was when he was a starving child, his skin is smooth; all traces of his injuries wiped away as though they’d never happened to him at all. His nails are filed and shining. He reaches up a hand to his face and feels the hard line of his cheekbone under perfect skin, feels his silky clean hair twisted back from his face. He puts on the outfit, the cargo pants and the t-shirt and the jacket and the boots. Aside from how thin he is, it’s like time has been rewound. It’s like the last few weeks in the arena haven’t happened at all. 

For a brief and terrifying moment, he thinks that maybe they haven’t. He thinks he’ll have to go back and do it all over again.

No. It’s done. He won. And he won’t have to do it again, but neither can he take it back. _Mbege’s last gargled breath; Trina and Pascal's clasped hands; the gleam of Ontari’s white teeth; Finn’s faltering grip in his own. Charlotte’s blank brown eyes at the bottom of the cliff._ He sits at the edge of the hospital bed until a door in the white wall slides open. Oh—they broadcast the reunion. They’ll televise his reunion with Effie, Clarke, with—

—Bellamy.

He stands up with shaky feet, and makes his way out to the hall, out to the chamber at the end of it. He wonders how he looks on camera; racks his brain to remember previous victors’ reunions with their team. Some had seemed happy. Some had seemed merely shocked. Even though he feels as though he’s spent the past week asleep, he’s exhausted to the core. He can’t put on a performance now. He’s got nothing left to act with.

Then, he glimpses Effie’s ridiculous hair. He can’t help it; a strange reluctant grin splits his face in two. And there’s Clarke, and the kindness he can see in her eyes nearly floors him there and then—because people, he remembers, can sometimes be kind. She’s kind. And Bellamy is next to them, clean and broad and safe.

He hugs Clarke first, brief, tight, as Effie squawks in glee, like an oversized and very colourful bird. She’s patting him on the back, yabbering on and on about how she just _knew_ he could do it and how genius it was to change his name to Murphy—as if it was her idea, and not just his name. Then, as he pulls back from Clarke’s embrace, Effie is saying how ecstatic she is that now that she’s had another victor, and so soon after Bellamy, and that she might actually get upgraded to a proper district next year.

Murphy can’t help but laugh at that, and keep laughing; it bursts out of him with such force that it surprises even him. It’s hysteric. He must look insane—to Clarke, to Effie, to Bellamy, to the cameras. He hardly cares. Effie is visibly shocked, her eyes a little too wide, though she’s smiling back at him; quite the actress herself.

And then Bellamy’s there, reaching for him, and somewhere the laughs turn to sobs—horrible sobs, sobs so big they crack open his chest and hurt him. Bellamy’s arms are closing around him and then he feels whatever thread of composure he has left shatter. He clings to him, so tight he’ll leave a bruise, and buries his face in the collar of Bellamy’s jacket, so that the cameras can’t see him cry, so the world can't see him break. Not again.

‘Hey,’ he hears Bellamy say. ‘Hey Murph. It’s alright.’ Bellamy’s hands are running through his hair. Bellamy’s arms are holding him tight. ‘It’s almost over,’ he whispers, so quiet the microphones won't catch it. ‘Almost home.’

Murphy counts to ten in his head. Five seconds allocated to falling apart. Another five seconds to put himself back together again.

Then he sniffles, and he steps back, and he grins at the three of them; his eyes red and his nose running. ‘S’just good to see you,’ he says, and it seems a weak thing to say, a fragile cover for his very public, very _televised_ , meltdown—but what else is there to say? It _is_ good to see them. All of them, even Effie. He had thought he would never see them again.

Bellamy nods. His eyes say: _You can do this._

_It’s almost over._

Clarke takes Murphy by the arm, and leads him away, and if he holds on to her with an iron grip, she doesn’t say a thing about it.

But he knows the truth. He saw it in Bellamy, saw it that night on the roof, by the wind chimes. It isn’t almost over; it will never be over. He might have won, but the Games haven’t ended, not really. He feels the prickling stares, the chill on his neck, the memories that threaten to engulf him. The ghosts of twenty-three children follow him from the arena, follow him down the hall, and back out into the world.

‘How are you?’ he asks Clarke, a little hollowly, his voice still strained from the tears. ‘How have you been? How many weeks was it?’ He may as well have said: _please, talk to me. Please tell me anything. Please get me out of my own head._ His mask had cracked once; he couldn’t let it happen again.

‘The Games ended on Saturday morning. They lasted for only two and a half weeks; they were quick, this time. It’s now Friday. Usually, there wouldn’t have been so long a delay before the victor’s ceremony, but you weren’t ready. You were quite sick for a while,’ she says, calm, measured. She leads him into the fitting room. ‘They did a full body polish on you. Not a scar left on your skin.’

‘I saw that,’ he says, sitting down on the chair. ‘Do I look pretty?’

She snorts, but he sees her relax a little as she turns to the rail of clothes. ‘Don’t get cocky. I’ve been ordered to put padding in your suit, so you don’t look so thin.’

‘I thought being thin was good here?’ He can’t help the bitterness that hardens his words. Having a bit of weight in District 12 was a privilege; here, a flaw. He feels, and not for the first time, as though the Capitol and District 12 are on different planets entirely.

‘You look like a wraith, Murphy,’ she says mildly. Before he can reply, she adds, ‘Better padded suits than plastic surgery?’

He draws in a sharp breath. ‘They were going to—?’

‘There was talk of it. They do it to a lot of the winning tributes. Bellamy intervened on your behalf. You still have your nose, don't worry.’ She picks out a suit from the rail and unzips the plastic cover.

He nods, reeling a little. _Bellamy stopped it_ , he thinks, over and over, as if somehow that’ll make it sink in. ‘How’s Wells?’ he asks.

‘He’s okay,’ she says, neutral. ‘Been helping me with some of the designs.’

He wonders what sort of dress Charlotte would have been wearing, had she won. He doesn’t ask Clarke. He closes his eyes for just a moment and hears the crunch of her skull as she hits the ground. The sharp tang of bile stings at the back of his throat; he swallows it. Opens his eyes. Thinks of something—anything—else.

‘Bellamy was quiet, earlier,’ he says, and finds his voice has gone breathy with some clogged-up emotion he can’t name. ‘...He really stopped them doing plastic surgery on me?’

She glances over at him. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘He’s been in your corner from the beginning. What do you think?’ She holds up the suit he’ll be wearing tonight. It’s elegant and simple; made from the same dark material as before, the one that changes colour depending on the light. The suit is exquisitely tailored, and subtly padded; after weeks caked in his own filth, he can hardly believe that in a few hours he’ll be wearing something so beautiful. He can’t quite believe, either, that he’ll be on the stage, watching the highlights of the Games with Caesar Flickerman, watching himself fight, survive, kill. He’ll have to come up with things to say. He’ll have to come up with a mask to wear, with another version of Murphy to play. He feels sick at the thought of it; he can’t pretend the same way he could at the beginning of the Games. He’s not the same person now.

‘Murphy?’ Clarke prompts, gently, and he realises he’s fallen silent, lost in his own thoughts, staring at the suit like it holds the secret to getting through the next few days.

‘It’s beautiful, Clarke. Really.’

She just nods, and then, carefully, says, ‘I didn’t want to lean too heavily on some of the design features of the first outfits.’ He senses something in her voice; he doesn’t know if it’s an apology or a warning. He can’t figure out which, or why, but he’s no fool. He doesn't ask. He just smiles and nods and says, ‘Well, I love it.’

He thinks back to the first outfits; the outfits that matched Charlotte. Black eyes on the chariots; red dress and red shoulder patch. Red halo of blood around her blonde head at the foot of a cliff. The way he couldn’t throw her, at the end. The way she looked at him. The crunch.

He thinks maybe he understands. A warning, and an apology.

* * *

He doesn’t see Bellamy again until he’s about to go onstage. To his surprise, he does find it so much easier to pretend once he’s in Clarke’s suit, when he’s dressed for the part. He can dredge back up that version of Murphy that strutted across the stage the first time; cruel and cocky and mocking. It’s almost too easy to wear that mask again. That version of him is whole. He’s worried about what will happen to him when he goes home, when there's no more need to pretend, and all he’s got left is the person he is underneath the gloating smile.

Bellamy comes to meet him. ‘Clarke worked her magic, I see,’ he says warmly, looking Murphy up and down. ‘You look great.’

‘I’ve been _padded_ ,’ Murphy replies, hunching his suit’s reinforced shoulders and beating a skinny fist against the soft layers of fabric that bulk up his chest.

Bellamy’s eyes crinkle when he smiles. Murphy desperately wants to take that smile, bottle it and pocket it, so he may take it out and look it again when next he feels afraid. This is a humiliating realisation and he decides never to think on it again.

‘Makeup’s not too bad either. I’ll send flowers to the grooming team; I can’t see your skull through your skin anymore.’

‘That’s a pity. I have great bone structure.’

Bellamy huffs another reluctant laugh, and then steps closer. He reaches out and adjusts his tie; Murphy stops breathing at the gentle hands at his throat—at the mic at his collar. If anyone’s listening, all they’ll hear is the ruffle of fabric.

‘You’re not in trouble,’ Bellamy whispers. ‘But be careful. Keep up the act. She was your soft spot; remember that.’

‘Charlotte?’ Murphy mumbles, voice small as a mouse. It’s the first time he’s said her name aloud since—

‘It wasn’t the finale they’d hoped for,’ whispers Bellamy. He lifts his hands from Murphy’s collar and smiles again. ‘You’ll do great.’

Murphy just nods. He doesn't feel nervous. He can’t afford nerves.

Bellamy leans close. ‘Break a leg, Murph,’ he says. The shortened version of his name is warm and affectionate—Murphy thinks back to before the Games, when he stood trembling in the Launch Room, thinking that his name, chanted by millions, only ever felt safe in Bellamy’s mouth.

Then the crowd begins to roar. Even if he had known what to say back, there’s no time. The show must go on.

Lights and cameras and action: Murphy smirks his way through it all. Caesar greets him warmly, sitting him down on the seat, talking inanely about something or other; the other Murphy, the new Murphy, replies something or other back. He knows even as it happens that he won’t remember any of the details of this interview tomorrow. The only part of him that doesn't feel distant and numb and disconnected from the words that come from his mouth, is the part of him that dreads the highlight reel that’s coming, the two hour rerun of the Games. They show the victor’s face in a little square in the corner. They’ll be watching his reactions. They’ll be watching him watch himself let Charlotte fall.

There is less time devoted to talking in this interview; that interview, where he has to give his opinions and his thoughts, is tomorrow. Tonight is all about recapping his Games, and it isn't long until he sees himself on the screen, himself on the podium, his face flat, his gaze calculating.

It’s a stranger on the screen; a stranger wearing his skin. He grins, and laughs, and winks at the camera; now, too, Murphy grins, and laughs, and winks at the cameras. His earlier worries were baseless, for the stranger has followed him home. He’s glad; the stranger knows what to do, and what to say. The stranger’s face in the corner of the screen is nothing but convincing. He lets the stranger take care of everything, and retreats back to the shadowy corners of his own mind.

They like the shot of him keeping watch at night, where the others—Finn, Roan, Monroe, Ontari—doze at the foot of the pillar; they keep flashing it onscreen. He wonders why. He sees himself sitting atop the pillar, one knee drawn close to his chest, the other leg braced against stone, looking out over the quiet arena. His face is cloaked in shadow, his shoulders hunched against the chill. His eyes glint in the dark. He looks like a watchful crow, he thinks. He looks like a man with a story to tell. There must be a reason for it. He thinks that they might be trying to spin a version of their victor that is savage and shadowy, a version to displace the boy vomiting blood at the edge of a cliff, the boy who, despite it all, didn’t want to let Charlotte go.

His killing of Pascal, of Trina. Watching them drown in the poison gas. He did what he had to do.

Ontari whispering his name on the screen. She runs a finger down the back of his neck. He’s surprised to see how blank he looks, how unafraid. His heart ratchets up to a wild pace even as he watches it back; he wonders how no one could tell.

The version of himself that he sees in the corner of the screen is unbothered, though; leaning back in his chair, vicious and cruel. He sighs. ‘She was hot,’ he tells the crowd. Caesar barks a laugh and claps him on the shoulder. 

He doesn't think what he said was funny at all.

Then he sees Ontari slitting Roan’s throat. He sees himself holding Finn’s hand as he died. The crowd hush. Caesar looks at him as though this is proof the monster from District 12 has a heart after all, and Murphy marvels at the character he built.

He remembers holding Finn’s hand because he felt like there was nothing else he could do. He remembers holding Finn’s hand, and thinking: _nobody should have to die alone._ He’s glad for how the camera zooms in, then, to his hands scrabbling at Finn’s shredded belt, finding nothing but a bent and broken knife. Nobody should have to die alone, but all Murphy wanted was a stolen knife, useless and bent out of shape.

‘Bellamy, Bellamy, Bellamy...’ he hears himself mumble, lips pressed to his knees by the water. He doesn't remember this, doesn't remember how he climbed up to the top of the cliff chanting Bellamy's name. He laughs, and the audience laugh, too. Hollow: nobody notices. How silly he was, high and sick and out of his mind. How silly he was to call out for Bellamy in his illness and his fear.

‘What can I say?’ he says. ‘He’s hot, too.’

They lose their minds at that. He doesn’t look for Bellamy’s face in the crowd; he doesn’t think he could bear to see it.

He watches Charlotte kill Ontari. He watches the final scramble; a hush descends over the audience, and he knows it’s now or never. He wipes away a tear. She was his soft spot, apparently. She falls from the cliff. Wet crunch. Zoom in. He does not close his eyes, does not look away. He owes her that much.

She was his soft spot.

He still let her fall. He blinks away crocodile tears; he doesn’t feel anything now. Not for Charlotte. Not for himself. He mustn’t; he’s afraid that when he does, he’ll be drowned in it. He’ll be carried away with the tide.

He’s a killer now. The thought doesn’t disturb him. He did what he had to do.

(He’s a killer now. He’s disturbed. He’s afraid. He feels hardly human.)

He did what he had to do.

They don’t linger on the boy who pukes blood, who has to be carried to the hover-craft, who has to be reminded of his own name. The screen goes black, and he hears the anthem play. He stands, playing proud, trying for triumphant, and President Snow places a crown atop his head. Snakelike eyes look into his, and whatever part of him that still remembers a thin boy in the rain on Reaping Day stares right back.

A grin, a fist upraised. John Murphy is victor.

He doesn’t feel like victor, like a winner. He feels like he did what he had to do.

He feels like a survivor. Nothing more. The glory he's heard so much about never comes.

* * *

He doesn't talk to anyone, really, after he comes offstage. Bellamy and Clarke both seem to sense he isn't in the mood after they congratulate him on a solid recap show, and conversations with Effie are so one-sided that she doesn't need any encouragement from him to keep talking.

He doesn't sleep that night.

For a moment—but just a moment—he considers going to the roof. But old empires and wind chimes won't help him in his extended interview tomorrow, just like they never helped him in the Games.

He tosses and turns and watches the sun rise.

* * *

He’s told the extended interview goes very well from Clarke _and_ Effie. He remembers none of it afterwards. He only knows that they don't ask him about Charlotte or Bellamy again.

Bellamy isn't there when he comes out of the room. Murphy doesn't ask.

* * *

It’s quite the party, the hall resplendent with Capitol glitz and glamour, the fashion garish and frightening and unreal, and all of it in honour of him. Murphy feels like he’s come to some sort of carnival, which is funny, because if the Capitol are to be believed _he’s_ the circus-animal here; the charmed and charming snake, their very own dancing monkey. He takes another sip—well, more of a gulp—of champagne. For once he feels no niggling fear that he’ll turn into his mother—wine-stained teeth, red-rimmed eyes—because right now, he doesn’t particularly care if he does.

He hasn’t seen Bellamy since yesterday, and he still hasn’t asked where he is; Bellamy doesn’t owe him anything, he keeps reminding himself. He survived. Bellamy’s job is done. Effie’s off mingling somewhere, her deep purple hat dipped out of sight amongst all the other glittering hairdos, the rainbow of hats and headpieces that drown the hall in noise and colour. Clarke stays close, trapped in conversation with another stylist, keeping her arm locked in his. He supposes he should be endlessly grateful for that, and he _is,_ but he just can’t quite feel anything for anyone at the moment. He would like to be in bed, he thinks, where there are no flashing lights, no cameras, no masks to wear or people to butter up. They’ve made him wear that grotesque crown, and he knows it’s the most ridiculous of clichés—but it does sit so very heavily upon his head. The beginnings of a headache are poking too-hot fingers into the soft and tender places between his temples and behind his eyes, and no amount of champagne is chasing it away.

Clarke pauses, mid-sentence. Her grip on Murphy’s arm tightens. ‘Oh, there’s Bellamy,’ she says. ‘Please excuse us.’

Clarke steers him away from the man with the tattooed face, and toward the end of the refreshment table, where a familiar head of dark curls stands arm-in-arm with a woman with pale blonde hair and dangling emerald earrings.

Murphy’s stomach seems to _drop—_ Bellamy had never mentioned having a girlfriend—but he’s a good-looking man, a kind and generous and sweet man—so why should it come as a surprise, as a horrible sort of shock—until the two of them turn around and Murphy sees the woman is at least ten years Bellamy’s senior. Why shouldn’t that be okay, he reasons with himself, that Bellamy’s with an older woman—until he sees a strange look in Bellamy’s eyes, even as he smiles, even as he ducks his head to kiss Clarke on the cheek and pat Murphy on the shoulder—and Murphy realises—he feels _sick_ with horror and guilt. She’s one of his _exploits._ She’s not his girlfriend at all.

‘And this is our very own victor, Murphy,’ Bellamy says, and the woman smiles and looks him up and down like he’s a piece of meat—a charmed snake, a dancing monkey. Nothing more. Hardly human.

‘Oh, the way you had to throw that little girl from the cliff at the end,’ says the woman, pressing a hand to her heart as if pained, ‘Oh it just broke my _heart!'_

‘Did it now?’ says Murphy, toneless.

‘I had wondered when you would introduce us, Bellamy,’ she says. Murphy loathes the sound of her voice. There’s nothing wrong with it, he just hates having to hear it. He smiles thinly at her—he doesn’t trust himself to speak. ‘Your very first victor—you must be so proud of him!’

‘Yeah,’ says Bellamy, and Murphy hates the way he smiles, all teeth and no heart. There’s so little of Bellamy in that smile. ‘Yeah I am.’

They separate, not long after that, and Murphy asks Clarke when they can leave.

‘Too much champagne,’ he says, and it's not entirely a lie. She smiles and nods, kindly, and doesn't ask him to explain further. He thinks she might be one of the best people he’s ever met, and he regrets how he can’t tell her that. He doesn’t know why he can’t tell her, only that some part of him says it’s too dangerous. The Games are over, but it’s still too dangerous to tell Clarke that she’s good. Why? he wonders, but his mind is slow and his head sore and no answer rises to the surface. She hasn’t taken her arm out of his for the entire evening, but she does now.

‘I get it,’ she says, and then, careful as ever, adds, ‘We’ll go soon. You should probably say goodbye to President Snow.’

‘Should I?’ he slurs. He’s drunker than he thought. Drunker than he intended to be. The noise grows distant and the colours begin to blur.

In the end, he forces on a poker face. He thanks President Snow for the opportunity. He knows, even as he does, that he won’t remember this tomorrow. Snow just smiles and bids him goodbye.

‘Until we meet again, John Murphy,’ he says, as if he knows something Murphy doesn’t. Murphy nods, and turns away, and wonders who President Snow would have to kill to hurt him. He has no family. He has no friends. He’s no fool.

Hands at his shoulders. Careful fingers lift the crown from his head, and he almost groans from the relief.

‘Heavy, was it?’ Bellamy asks, dryly, and Murphy scoffs at him.

‘Quoting Shakespeare at me, now, Bell?’ he slurs, and wishes he didn’t— _Bell?_ Where the hell did he get _Bell_ from?

Bellamy snorts a laugh, and hands the crown to the attendant. Murphy has no idea how he got to the cloakroom. He leans against the wall, and feels it tip. Oh, he _is_ drunk. He smirks, at Bellamy’s concern, the way he keeps a steadying hand on Murphy’s padded shoulder, the way his mouth pulls down into a frown.

‘I won,’ Murphy tells him, gleefully. ‘I won the Hunger Games. _Me!_ Can you believe it, Bellamy? Can you believe it?’

‘Yeah, well, you’re full of surprises, Murphy. Come on. Time for bed. We’ll be going home tomorrow.’

‘See, that’s what I like about you, Bellamy,’ he announces, and nods at the cloakroom attendant, pointing over his shoulder to where Bellamy stands, bemused. ‘See him? He _never_ lies to me. He didn’t say, “Oh Murphy! You’ll smash it in the Games. You’ll win no problem!” Noooo—he says,’ and here, he puts on an approximation of Bellamy’s low, manly voice, ‘he says: “Murphy. Survive.” And that’s what I did! That, my friend, is what I did!’

‘You did,’ says Bellamy, dry, ‘Now come on. Time to get you to bed, huh?’

‘Where’s Clarke?’ Murphy says.

‘Right here,’ he hears her say. Oh. There she is. Blonde and chic. Very cool girl. He’s so fond of her. He’s even ready to forgive her for being from the Capitol, that’s how fond of her he feels. He has no idea how long she’s been there, or why she’s smiling.

‘I have a secret to tell you,’ he whispers. He thinks Bellamy and the attendant—Avox, mute, looking like he’s fighting off a smile—can possibly still hear him, even though he’s doing the best whispering he can.

‘Can it wait?’ she asks, and she’s smiling, too, but there’s worry in her eyes. Hmm—maybe she’s right. Maybe now isn’t the time for secrets. But he so wants to tell her. And it’s not a shameful secret, just a dangerous one.

‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s important. My secret is: I think you’re wonderful. Best stylist in the world. Shh. It’s a secret because I don’t want you to tell Wells.’ _It’s a secret because I want you to be safe,_ he thinks, but he doesn’t say that part aloud. He doesn’t know why he mentions Wells, either—he’s been doing his best to avoid thinking about Wells.

Clarke shakes her head. Does she have tears in her eyes? He can’t be sure, because he can barely see out of his own. ‘Thanks, Murphy. I mean it. And I think you’re wonderful, too.’

‘Eww,’ says Murphy, and Clarke laughs.

‘Come on, Murphy,’ and Bellamy’s gentle hands are manoeuvring him into the glossy taxi that waits for him. Bellamy gets in next to him, too, and it shouldn’t make Murphy feel warm and fuzzy, but it does.

‘You don’t want to stay at the party?’ Murphy asks him in surprise.

Bellamy grimaces, and shakes his head. ‘Happy you’ve given me an excuse to escape, to be honest.’

If Murphy were more sober, he thinks he might have bitten his tongue. But, as is becoming increasingly clear, even to him, he’s not sober. ‘Are you okay, Bellamy?’

‘I’m fine. Better than you’ll be feeling tomorrow.’ Bellamy’s shoulders are a hard straight line of tension. His face says, clearly, _please can we not talk about this._ Even plastered, Murphy can see that.

He shrinks down in his seat. ‘Dumb,’ he says.

‘What’s dumb?’

‘Can’t even get too drunk at my own party without Mister White Knight swooping in to take me home.’

Bellamy laughs. ‘Mister White Knight?’

‘Yeah,’ says Murphy. ‘You saved me. In the arena. With the sponsors’ gifts. With the snakebite.’

‘Just doing my job, Murph.’

‘No,’ Murphy shakes his head. ‘Before. On the roof. Was that part of your job?’

He’s sobering up. He can feel it. He doesn’t want to be sober. He doesn’t want to have to think, and especially not about Bellamy.

‘I did it because I wanted to, not because I had to, if that’s what you’re asking.’ Bellamy’s voice is quiet and rumbly. It could put Murphy to sleep—and he hasn’t slept in what feels like a very long time.

‘Mmm,’ he says. ‘Well. Thank you.’

‘No need to thank me. You’re the one saving _me_ right now, remember?’

Murphy barks a laugh, then, a laugh so loud he must startle the taxi driver. ‘And all I had to do was get too drunk at my own party. Ha!’

A hand around his shoulders. Thumb rubbing circles against his suit. He could sleep here, in this taxi. He could sleep forever.

Too soon it’s time to get up, and too soon it’s time to go to the elevator. Murphy perhaps pretends to be drunker than he is, to lean against Bellamy for support. He still isn’t sure if he’ll remember a thing tomorrow, but he would like to remember this, the warmth and the closeness and the sureness of Bellamy’s arm where it holds him tight.

He falls back, fully clothed, onto his own bed, and he feels, distantly, Bellamy’s hands on his ankles, slipping off his shoes.

Then it’s the morning, his mouth tastes _disgusting_ , his head is _splitting_ , there’s a glass of water on the bedside table, and it’s time to go home.

He sits up and finds he’s still in his clothes from the night before—but his suit jacket is folded on the chair, and his shoes left neatly at the foot of the bed, and the duvet has been tugged up to his shoulders. He was wrong: he remembers every bit of last night.

He grumbles his way through breakfast, nursing a black coffee. There’s not a chance he could stomach anything else.

‘How’s the head, then, Murphy?’ Bellamy asks with a grin.

Murphy shoots him a withering look in return. ‘Can’t believe you let me get too drunk at my own party.’

* * *

The nightmares start on the train home, and they don't stop when he returns to District 12. All of his things—and he had very few things—have been moved into his new home in the Victor’s Village already. It’s like a ghost town, the little estate of big houses, with a central garden square, meticulously kept. Only two—now three, he supposes—of the houses are inhabited; in seventy one years, he's District 12’s fourth ever victor.

His new house is so big he gets to choose his own room. He chooses the smallest, and even it is huge. It’s big enough that it would fit six boys in the community home; a life he barely remembers now. He feels like that kid was another person entirely. The Games are over and the new Murphy is gone, but he knows he’s lost the old Murphy too, somewhere along the way. There’s nothing left. Now he doesn't know who or what he is. He passes the Seam, passes the community home, and sees no ghost of himself amongst the dust and the grime.

He never has coal dust in his nails.

He’s rich, now. That’s a big thing. He has more money than he could ever need. He isn't allowed to give it away. It’ll only get the person he gives it to in trouble. The money is his, but it was the Capitol’s first, and he must be careful what he does with it. That’s the first thing he learns, though he guesses he knew it all along. He might have won the Games, but he’s still the property of the Capitol. They still own him, just like they own Bellamy, just like they own everybody, victor or not, in every District. He might have won the Games, but there’s no escaping them. There’s no escaping any of it.

He spends the first week alone in his room. He tries drinking the nightmares away, but it just makes him sick, mostly. He tries staying up all night, but there isn't really all that much to do. He tries sleeping during the day and staying awake at night, but the nightmares don't care if it's the sun or the moon that shines. Eventually, he stops trying anything at all. He just—endures.

Time passes, an ever-lengthening distance between him and the Games. Still he wakes in a cold sweat nearly every night. Still he nearly screams the roof down.

The walls of his new house are thick. Nobody hears him.

He could talk to Bellamy, he supposes. They’re neighbours, now. Bellamy and Octavian and their mother, Aurora, all live in the big house right next door. He knows Bellamy suffers from nightmares too; he’s seen it. But something stops him, every time.

Bellamy _had_ to help him before. Before, it was his job to make sure Murphy got to sleep at night, to make sure Murphy ate and trained and listened and lived. It was his job to make sure Murphy survived. And Murphy had.

Bellamy's job is done. He doesn't owe Murphy a thing. So where does that leave him now?

* * *

Light filters through the trees; a scatter of yellow pebbles on the ground. The birds are singing: mockingbird, maybe even a mockingjay. But there is no peace here. Wildflowers wave in the breeze. There’s a shadow in the branches.

He freezes. Blood gone to ice. She’s here.

He looks up. Not quick enough.

Thud: knife in his chest.

Dead. It doesn't hurt.

His vision blurs, but the person in the trees is unmistakable. It’s not Charlotte, not her brown eyes or slow, careful smile.

Ink fills in his eyes, drowning the trees and the birds in oil. Before he blacks out, he sees that boy, a boy from District 12, the one who killed him smirk, and wink.

Not dead for long.

Running.

The panthers are there and there is no pillar to climb now, there is no escape now, and he feels sick with it, so sick that bile rises sharp and sour at the back of his throat. He can’t outrun them, he can't fight them, but the teeth that clamp down on his shoulder are not teeth at all; they're a hand, a hand delicate as a baby bird’s, a knife at his throat—

He blinks and Charlotte has turned into Ontari, and her teeth gleam white and hungry in the dark of the cave. He can’t stop it; he doesn't know what to say to stop it. But the camera will see it. The world will see it. And he wants her to stop.

Charlotte is crying. He pushes Ontari off—she disintegrates into smoke, but that doesn't worry him now. Charlotte is crying in the dark. There are twenty-three other voices that cry out in the dark, but her voice is the loudest.

‘You killed me,’ she tells him. There’s something wrong with her. She turns around and the back of her head has been smashed open and her blonde braid is dyed red.

‘You killed her,’ says Bellamy. Deep voice. Betrayal in his eyes. 'You killed her. You killed her. You killed her. You killed her.’

‘She was only a child,’ says his mother, says his father, two spectres in the dark, in the mine, white skin and eyes black with coal-dust and ash. ‘You’re a killer, son. You’re a killer now.’

‘I did what I had to do,’ Murphy cries, voice raw and breaking.

Bellamy lifts an axe. They're on a grassy plain. The horizon is stretching away from him, stretching all the way to the ends of the earth, getting further and further away. A dizzying distance. The axe glints in the sun. 

‘Mom,’ says Murphy. ‘Dad.’

His mother won't help him. Her body is empty. Her soul is down in the burning mine shaft, in the hellish heat at the centre of the earth. His father won't help him. His father bursts into ashes. His father is coal and blood and dust now. There isn't enough left to bury. They have left him all alone.

_Murphy?_

‘I did what I had to do to survive,’ says Murphy.

‘So did I,’ says Bellamy; the axe cuts into Murphy’s neck, but he doesn't feel it. 

_Murphy, wake up._

Bellamy has his knee to his chest and nothing but murder in his eyes. He keeps going. 

A sick swoop: Murphy sees his shoulders have come away from his body. He is loosed from gravity, loosed from the surface of the earth—the plain stretching long and far—he might fall away, his severed head, fall away into space and be lost forever.

No. Bellamy holds onto him. Bellamy holds up his severed head, like he holds up a prize, like he holds up a victory. And then Bellamy says in his deep voice: ‘Ladies and gentlemen! I give you the winner of the Seventy-First Annual Hunger Games!’

Hands around his shoulders—his head is still attached!—soft and comforting sounds, a warm rise and fall, the softness of a t-shirt pressed against his tear stained cheek. ‘You’re safe, you’re safe,’ says Bellamy. ‘Shush, Murphy, sweetheart. You’re safe.’

‘Sweetheart?’ Murphy mumbles, voice laughably raw. He must have been screaming.

Bellamy is petting his hair; it’s only then that he notices how he shakes and trembles. _Sweetheart?_

Bellamy chuckles; Murphy hears it rumble through the chest that presses close to his ear. ‘You gonna object to that right _now_ , Murph?’ he murmurs. ‘Anyway, it’s an old habit,’ he explains, before Murphy can reply. ‘From when my mom had to do this for me.’

Murphy lifts his head. Bellamy is sitting in his bed, holding him close to his chest. The blankets have been kicked away; Murphy’s not wearing any shirt, and his bare skin feels clammy and sticky with cold sweat. Bellamy doesn't seem to be disgusted at him, though—his arms are still solidly around Murphy's shoulders. He must have tried to stop Murphy from flailing, or from attacking him in his sleep—like he had attacked Murphy in his sleep, back in the Training Centre, what feels like an eternity ago. 

‘You didn't have to do this,’ says Murphy. He sits back, rubs his damp eyes. Bellamy lets go. If Murphy mourns the warmth and solidity of his arms, well, it’s only because the dream still has him feeling unsettled and raw, like all of his skin has been scraped clean and only the cracked truth of him is left: the Games are over, but he’s still so, so afraid.

‘I know,’ says Bellamy.

‘Did I wake you?’

‘No.’ He shifts a little, awkwardly. Even in the dark Murphy can see his grimace. ‘I was checking on you,’ he says. ‘You’ve been kind of … withdrawn lately.’

 _Withdrawn._ That’s a kind way to put it, Murphy thinks. He’s been so much worse than just _withdrawn._ He doesn't think he’s spoken to another soul in a week, maybe two.

‘Sorry,’ says Murphy. He knows he doesn't sound like he means it.

Bellamy rises to his feet, making as if to go, before he pauses. ‘Murphy, I know you’re not okay,’ he says. ‘You don't need reminding—but I won my Games, too. I know—I know what it’s like. What it means. What—what it costs.’

Murphy looks up at him where his shadow lingers by the door, and wants to make some sort of sardonic reply. He wants to snark, to snap, to say something that will have Bellamy turn away from him for good, that will make Bellamy leave and never come back. 

He’s been alone from the day his father died. He’s been alone his whole life. And here Bellamy stands on the threshold of his dark bedroom, asking without words if Murphy will let him in. But Murphy’s meant to be alone. He always will be alone. Bellamy’s nothing but a flickering light in the dark, a promise like smoke. He knows if he reaches out to grab hold, Bellamy’ll just slip free of his fingers; and he’ll be all the worse then, for having known what it means to have a friend. For having known how it feels not to be alone. He ought not to fool himself. He ought to expediate the process. Better to chase the light away before it has the chance to leave him.

He doesn't do that. Something’s rising, some buried terror he’s carried with him from the day of the Reaping to now, some sickness in the heart of him—he feels it burst.

He says, ‘Shit, Bellamy.’

Then he starts to cry.

Once he starts crying, he can't stop. It bubbles up out of him, like he’s about to overflow with it. His chest aches with the force of his sobs.

‘Shit,’ Bellamy agrees, and laughs, but he’s crying a little too, and he comes and joins Murphy where he still sits on the bed and folds him into his arms, here where it’s safe and here where it’s warm. Murphy isn't sure why he’s crying, or who he’s crying for, only that he couldn't stop even if he wanted to. He isn't sure, either, how long the two of them cling to one another in the dark. They stay, tearful and trembling, in the bed. It doesn't matter. He doesn't think either of them want to move. They cry themselves back to sleep, the two of them, together in the dark house at the dark heart of District 12’s Victor’s Village. 

When Murphy wakes the following morning, Bellamy’s head is resting on his bare chest. Dark curls tickle his chin. He didn't dream. Dried tears make his eyes sticky, and it’s too warm, now, in the bed with the two of them tangled together like a pair of octopuses, but Murphy slept just fine.

He extracts himself from Bellamy’s grip; Bellamy only snuffles and rolls over, content as a dozing old dog. Murphy is glad Bellamy cannot see him smile like a fool at the sight of it. He pads barefoot to the kitchen to make coffee for two, and the big, empty, silent house doesn't feel half as lonely.

* * *

They don't talk about it, the night where they slept in one another’s arms. But it doesn't matter—because they _are_ talking, now. Whatever rift Murphy had tried to dig between them has collapsed, has started filling itself up again. It should frighten Murphy, how he’s letting Bellamy back in, how he’s even letting Aurora and Octavian in—but he’s sick of being afraid.

Murphy has never been good at following rules. So he spends his money on the community home, in secret, and only every so often. A new toy dropped at the front door every few weeks; a box of cakes delivered to the cook every Sunday. If they know it’s him, they don't comment on it. If the Peacekeepers have to come give him a talking-to, they don't. Anyway, the District will be showered with gifts for the year; another perk of having a winning tribute.

It’s the only time that Murphy feels proud of what he’s done.

The first thing he buys for himself is a set of beautiful glass wind chimes from the Hob, the greasy black market in the Seam. An elderly blind lady makes them, stringing them together in delicate arrangements. She’s been doing it her whole life. Murphy pays her twice what she asks, and walks away before she can correct him.

He hangs them in the garden square at the centre of the Village. He chooses a low branch, where they dangle above the white bench, a bench just big enough for two. It’s peaceful, in the garden. If he sits there long enough, sometimes he can forget. Sometimes, he’ll look out his window at night, and find Bellamy is there; a shadow by the wind chimes, a tablet in his hands.

Murphy finds he often spends more time in the Blake's' house than he does in his own; listening to Bellamy read, or helping Aurora in the kitchen, or learning how to hunt with Octavian in the hope that his old classmate might actually warm to him. Sometimes, he goes with Bellamy over to the only other occupied house in the Victor’s Village to make sure the old drunkard who mentored Bellamy years earlier hasn’t died in his sleep yet. The old man isn’t all that fond of Bellamy, despite Bellamy having been the first District 12 tribute to win since he himself had—though he takes a strange shine to Murphy. Bellamy says they’re a little bit alike. Murphy decides not to reflect on that.

Time passes, and it's not always bad. It doesn't always hurt.

* * *

Bellamy is called to the Capitol for a week. Octavian has a face like murder the entire time. Murphy asks if he’ll let him come hunting; they don't have all that much to say to one another, but not from lack of trying on Murphy’s part. Octavian is a dangerous person, Murphy thinks, and not just because of his skills at hunting. There is something brewing behind his flinty grey eyes, some well of defiance that runs deep and runs hot. Murphy thinks Octavian is precisely the sort of person the Capitol ought to be afraid of. They can kill him, but they'll never control him.

They hunt three times that week, catching four rabbits and a pheasant, selling them for next to nothing in the Hob. Or, well, Octavian catches them. Murphy isn't grossly incompetent, but he's not especially good, either. They don't talk much, and definitely not about anything that matters. Mostly, they just reminisce about the only time they were ever friendly—years ago, when they were both little kids in the Seam, playing tag at recess and occasionally copying one another's homework. Both of them wonder about Bellamy, though neither will say it aloud.

Murphy hardly sleeps a wink, and Bellamy hardly sleeps a wink himself for a week once he’s back. Murphy finds him in his house in the mornings, having let himself in in the middle of the night. He finds him dozing on the sofa, watching TV, baking (and burning) bread, or reading about more wars and more emperors. He seems fine. Murphy doesn't think he is.

Maybe they ought to talk about it. They don't. What is there to say?

* * *

Whenever he can’t sleep, or whenever he needs to settle his racing heart and soothe his frayed nerves, Murphy goes to the garden bench where the wind chimes he bought hang on an overhead branch, and he finds he can breathe again. Bellamy begins to join him there. They talk, sometimes, and sometimes they don’t. When it rains they sit under the porch of Murphy’s home and listen to the rhythmic pitter-patter overhead. It doesn’t cure it, it doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t make it better—but it helps. And that’s enough.

Murphy sits out on the bench all evening the day he finds out that Charlotte’s father was found dead in his home. The healer-woman from the Seam had examined the body and ruled it a suicide. Murphy might not live in the Seam any more, but news still travels fast. It’s been four months since the Games. Yesterday would have been Charlotte’s thirteenth birthday.

‘You gonna come in?’ Bellamy asks him, after the sun has set, after most of the lights over District 12 have blinked out.

‘I don’t think so,’ says Murphy. ‘Not yet. Not for a while.’ He wonders if he could live here, on this bench. He certainly thinks he would be happy to die here, in this peaceful square, under the cover of night and the old oak tree. Better than what he could have hoped for in the arena. Better than alone in his home, at the end of a noose, mourning his murdered little daughter. Better than a sharp short fall and an obliterating impact; better than having his head smashed open at the bottom of a cliff.

Bellamy leaves. Then he comes back. He has a blanket for each of them.

‘You don’t have to stay,’ Murphy tells him.

Bellamy squeezes in next to him on the bench, settles into the space like he belongs there. ‘I know,’ he says simply. ‘I would like to.’

They fall into silence, both lost to whatever world their thoughts have carried them to. There are no stars tonight; the clouds hang low and heavy overhead. There is enough of a breeze to catch on the wind chimes, but only just; a barely-there whisper of music. 

‘I think it’s ironic,’ Murphy says after a while. ‘That it was me. The one who watched Trina and Pascal die, who took the mace and smashed that boy from District 9's head in.’

He wonders how much of that person is left. He wonders if he’s more killer now than man. More victor than tribute. He wonders who he is.

‘Ironic that you survived?’

‘No. I always survive. I think it’s ironic that I couldn’t kill her, in the end. Not even after she tried to kill me.’

He listens as Bellamy pauses. An inhale, an exhale. His breath puffs out in the night. It’s getting chilly in District 12; both of them hunch their shoulders against the cold, arms touching on the narrow bench. It might snow soon. ‘I don’t think it’s ironic at all,’ Bellamy tells him.

‘Oh yeah?’

He glances over, with that look, the one that Murphy can never quite figure out. ‘You don’t need me to tell you that you’re not a bad person, Murphy.’

‘Don’t I?’ Murphy whispers.

Bellamy takes his hand. His palm feels warm and alive, whereas Murphy isn’t sure if he ever came back to life again. If he ever was alive to begin with. He remembers holding Effie’s hand in the rain, his own limp and wet. He remembers holding Charlotte’s hand on the chariot, how delicate it had felt. He remembers holding his mother’s hand in the darkening house, listening to wailing on the street, wondering if his dad had been afraid to die. He remembers holding Finn’s burned, ruined hand as he slipped away; remembers Charlotte’s hands clinging to his own as she dangled over the cliff. He remembers, remembers, remembers. He’s sick with all the remembering.

Bellamy’s palm is warm and strong where it holds his.

‘It’s not,’ Murphy says, slowly, painfully, ‘that I think I was born bad. Or that the bad things that I did—I don’t think that they define me. I did them because I had to, because I needed to do it to survive. I played my part. It's that I don’t know where the act ends anymore. I don’t know where the bad in me ends. I don’t know who—I don’t know how to be all these people. The killer and the victor and the boy from the Seam. I don’t know if the person I was before is still here… I don’t know what else I have left, when you take the act away.’

‘You have me,’ says Bellamy, simply. ‘And I know who you are. I—’ he pauses. He swallows. Inhale, exhale. ‘I know who you are, John Murphy, and I don’t think you’re a bad person at all.’ Bellamy twines his fingers through Murphy’s. Something hangs in the air with the mist of their breath; something hushed, something waiting. ‘The things I’ve done,’ he says, ‘the things I did in the arena and the things I _do_ now, every time I go back to the Capitol, every time President Snow calls—I do them for my mother. For Octavian. Because I have to. But I don’t think any of that makes me a bad person.’

‘Bellamy—that would _never_ —how—’ Murphy starts to say, aghast, sick with the thought of Bellamy back at the party, the woman on his arm with the green earrings—thinking that doing that, doing what he had to, could ever make _him_ bad—

‘But it’s easy—’ Bellamy interrupts, emphatic, and he’s looking at Murphy, now, looking into his eyes, desperate—for what? Murphy wonders. For Murphy to understand it? For Murphy to forgive him for it? As if he could ever understand. As if there were anything to forgive. ‘—It’s easy to forget who _I_ am, when I’m making sacrifices for somebody else. You know? Well. I hope you won’t, ever, but—but you might. One day Snow might give you a call, too. But that’s not what I mean. I mean that—I mean that it’s easy to think you don’t know who you are anymore. That you’ve lost all of who you were before. But—do you know who I am?’

Murphy doesn’t know what to say for a moment. He feels as though Bellamy has given him something, something he doesn’t yet understand, something fragile and breakable—and Murphy has careless, clumsy hands. _Do you know who I am?_

The wind chimes he bought tinkle overhead.

‘Did you know,’ Murphy says, hoarse and raw, ‘that the Roman emperor California tried to give his favourite horse the highest possible position in government?’

Bellamy just stares at him for a moment. Then, he starts to laugh—tearful laughter, but laughter all the same. ‘Cali _g_ _ula_ ,’ he says. ‘The Roman emperor Caligula.’

Murphy echoes his smile. ‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘That’s what you told me. In the Capitol, that night when I couldn't sleep. The first night. And that— _that’s_ who you are, Bellamy.’

‘Oh, a walking fun-facts generator?’

‘No,’ says Murphy. ‘Clever. Interested. Funny. Kind—’ His voice breaks. He doesn’t know why. Words seem a poor sort of tool in that moment, a weak way to paint Bellamy. They’re not up to the task. They can’t capture all that he is. ‘You’re _still_ a walking fun-facts generator,’ Murphy whispers, ‘even after everything.’

A tear drips from Bellamy’s chin. He squeezes Murphy’s hand. Warm, strong, solid. ‘That’s the point I was trying to make all along,’ he says, voice thick. ‘All your old pieces are still here, you know. You’re still here.’

Murphy can’t find the words, so he just nods. He doesn’t know if all of his pieces are still there, or if he’s lost most of them, or if any of them will ever fit back in their old places—but he trusts Bellamy. He trusts that he wouldn’t lie to him. He hasn’t lied yet.

Bellamy looks up, at the low and heavy dark. ‘Smells like rain,’ he says.

‘How’d you know?’

He shrugs a little. ‘Years poaching in the woods will teach you to keep an eye on the weather. We should go in.’ 

Murphy stands. ‘Yeah. I guess it is getting late. See you tomorrow?’ He dreads the dark and empty house that waits for him, dreads the nightmares lurking, ready to pounce, just underneath his bed. But it’s late. And it’s going to rain.

Bellamy stands too, reaches out to grab the hand that Murphy had let go. ‘Wait, Murphy.’

Murphy waits.

Something clouds Bellamy’s features, and Murphy feels the shift in the air like a pressure-drop, like the rain Bellamy is promising has already begun to fall. ‘Do you…’ Bellamy begins, then trails off, swallowing.

With a strange and electric rush Murphy realises that Bellamy—steadfast Bellamy—looks _nervous_. ‘Do I what, Bellamy?’

‘Do—do you want me to stay?’ Bellamy asks, eyes wide, face open. ‘With you. Tonight.’

Murphy tries not to let his shock show; but he’s never been good at hiding things from Bellamy. He’s a born survivor, a born pretender—but not when it comes to Bellamy. ‘I—do you _want_ to stay?’

It feels like a dance. Like both of them are skipping around a truth, a truth at the centre of them, a truth that lives here in the garden square, that sings along with the wind chimes.

'Remember,’ says Bellamy, ‘when we used to sit in the garden on the roof? In the Capitol?’

Murphy nods.

‘I always slept better, then.’ He swallows. Hollow at his throat; Murphy wants to run careful, gentle fingers over that throat. Feel Bellamy’s pulse against his own. ‘And—remember when I stayed with you. We slept together. A while ago, now. After you had that nightmare.’

Murphy nods again.

‘I slept better that night, too.’

The breeze catches on the wind chimes again. Only a whisper, like the suggestion of music, the hope of music. ‘Do you want to stay?’ Murphy asks him. Only a whisper, a suggestion, a hope. 

Bellamy still hears him. ‘I’d like that,’ he says. ‘I’d like to stay with you, Murphy.’

‘Then please,’ says Murphy. ‘Please stay with me. Tonight. And tomorrow. If you want. I would like that, too.’

* * *

Bellamy stays that night. And the next night, and the next.

And the night after that, Bellamy kisses him. In his kitchen, when they look out over the darkening District. Murphy kisses him back. When he’s kissing Bellamy, hands in his curls, he doesn’t have to think about who he is now. He doesn’t have to think about anything, other than the taste of his lips, the warmth of his skin, the way he smiles when they break apart. He can run careful, gentle hands over Bellamy’s throat. He can feel the sure steady pulse under his skin.

It doesn’t cure him of his ills, the way true love’s kiss does in the stories. But maybe it helps.

And maybe, Murphy thinks, it doesn’t need to cure him. Maybe it’s good anyway.

Bellamy kisses him again, and again, and again, today and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. And it’s good, despite it all.

The two of them still have nightmares. The two of them still sit on the bench at night, sometimes for long enough to see the sun rise. Murphy thinks there probably isn’t any cure for what they both have. For the cold sweats, the nightmares; for the horrible moments where he slips back into the past, the moments where no matter how hard he screws his eyes shut, no matter how hard he pinches the skin on the inside of his wrist, he’s still back in the arena. Ontari's got her hands around his throat, or Charlotte’s lifting the knife, or Finn’s stepping on the mine—he’s never escaped, he’s been living in a dream, and now he is going to die, or worse, he is going to live, he is going to kill—

He still forgets who he is, sometimes. Sometimes, Bellamy can’t stand to be touched. Sometimes, Bellamy shrinks away from him, or looks at him and doesn't see him at all. Sometimes, Murphy imagines the shadow of Ontari in the dark. Sometimes, President Snow calls for Bellamy. Maybe soon he’ll call for Murphy, too.

Sometimes life feels impossible.

And yet life still goes on.

And it helps, when he wakes in a cold sweat, nightmares gnawing at his eyes and his ears, not to wake alone. It helps to have a hand to hold in the dark. It helps that it’s Bellamy’s bed and Bellamy’s hand, that it’s Bellamy who sees the person he was and the person he could be still there, in all of the broken pieces. It helps that it’s Bellamy, Murphy thinks, but that's not the whole truth of it.

The whole truth, he thinks, is that it could never have been anybody else.

* * *

It does not rain the day of the Reaping. Bellamy will be waking up alone, Murphy knows, waking up to a cold bed and a note on the bedside table.

He draws his knees up to his chest on the bench, huddles in his sweater, draws the sleeves down to cover his hands. The morning sun filters through a veil of cloud; a breeze catches on the wind chimes. It’s chilly, this morning, but it's still early. There’s time for the sun to come out.

It’ll be his first year as mentor, and his stomach is curdling with dread. There’s no death sentence hanging over him, now, but in truth this feeling is almost as sick, almost as nightmarish. He thinks back to Bellamy's face on the rooftop, nearly a full year ago now: _It never gets any fucking easier._

Well. At least neither of them will be doing it alone.

Bellamy finds him as the sun finally breaks through, butter spilling over the smoky roofs of District 12. He wonders who will be put to death this year. He wonders just who he will have to meet, to get to know, to train and mentor and help, and watch die.

Bellamy comes and sits beside him.

‘You okay?’ he asks.

‘Are you?’

Bellamy doesn't answer.

Light filters down through gaps in the clouds in angular streams of gold. All the edges glitter. It’s the prettiest morning Murphy has seen in a long, long time. Not a hope of rain. They sit there together until the sun comes out, and longer, still. He doesn't think either of them could stomach breakfast. Bellamy holds his hand, and nobody comes and disturbs them.

‘We have to go soon,’ says Bellamy.

They have to go soon, to stand in the square and watch Effie pluck two more names out of the fishbowl. They have to go soon, and mentor two dead kids walking. They have to go soon, and relive all the old nightmares all over again. They’ll have to watch their mentees die, and know that they failed to save them. And then they’ll have to do it all over again. And again, and again, the next year, and the next, and the next.

They have to go soon.

‘But not yet?’ asks Murphy.

‘Not yet,’ says Bellamy.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a very big thanks again to nico (sapphictomaz) in particular for listening to my many rambles about this fic, and also to charlie (blueparacosm) and elle (hopskipaway) who have so kindly hyped it up. all three are also incredibly talented writers and i implore you to read everything they've written if you have not already. superstars!!!!
> 
> thank you so very much for reading all the way to the end, and to everyone who has left kudos and comments.
> 
> to finish i'm sure everyone is aware of what's going on in the world right now but if you haven't yet signed any petitions or read up on any of the issues, this is a great place to start: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ there are ways to donate even if you can't afford to give money right now.
> 
> thank you!


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